


Papaya Two: A McLaren Story

by mgusleigh



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: But not particularly pure to star wars, Gen, Star Wars AU, capes, just kinda u kno, or part of any recognisable story, pals in space, rebellions are built on confusing interpersonal tensions, that vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21901714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mgusleigh/pseuds/mgusleigh
Summary: The Ring of Nur’burg is no place for a nice boy. Fortunately, while Carlos can’t pretend he has any competition in the scum and villainy stakes, he’s so very good at getting around places quickly. Usually. Actually he's not doing well with that right now, either.(complete)
Relationships: Lando Norris & Carlos Sainz Jr
Comments: 46
Kudos: 47





	1. who're you calling scruffy-looking

The Ring of Nur’burg is no place for a nice boy. Fortunately, while Carlos can’t pretend he has any competition in the scum and villainy stakes, he’s so _very_ good at getting around places quickly. Usually. Actually he's not doing well with that right now, either. 

He’s got two things to do: meet Ren Ault and collect the data and then get out of here in one piece, neither of which is likely to be very easy or possible to do without getting shot at a few times. But needs must and at least the thick, blue bantha-wool of his cape has a handy anti-blaster coating that should be good for a few rounds. 

Carlos would feel conspicuous, in most places, dressed in neck-to-toe lurid orange covered only with flowing blue but he’s almost standing out as conservative here, the assembled masses dressed almost as lairily as they’re behaving. He does at least have a size advantage, a slim human slipping easily between drunk neimoidians trying not to get in the way of any aggressive-looking trandoshans.

The middle of a major smashball tournament was a good cover for getting in but definitely one of the long list of things that wasn’t going to make this easier once he actually got here. And if he doesn’t get this list by 0745 standard then a lot of people are probably going to die, so no pressure.

His bothan sucks, so trying to read the street signs as he slips between endless, tree-crowded corridors between tightly packed jungle and buildings is getting him nowhere. It was too late to find a local fixer by the time he’d got Ren’s cryptic message and he’d kind of assumed this might be easier than it’s turning out to be - or at least got excited enough at the idea he might be able to actually _do something_ that it hadn’t been much of a concern.

Finally giving up, he ducks into an archway and gets his locator out. Random guessing is more likely to make him fuck up than anything else and fucking up isn’t really an option on this one. Frantically scrolling, it takes him a couple of seconds to notice a man - boy, maybe - opposite him in the archway who is definitely _giggling_ at Carlos’ dishevelled state.

“What?” He tries to sound threatening but it’s difficult when 160cm of skinny, curly-haired mirth is looking at him and he’s just worked out why. They’re wearing basically the same outfit, bar a neon yellow stripe along the guy opposite’s cape and eh, that is pretty funny. “Oh.”

“You’re a big fan, then?” This dude can’t stop laughing, face half-hidden behind his hand and Carlos has no idea what he even means.

“Uhm. Yeah, sure.” Maybe this is worth a gamble, innovation is the mother of something. Or maybe desperation. Either works fine, here. “You local?”

The guy wrinkles his nose, “You’re not? Not really a hotspot for human tourists.”

“I’m uh, here on business.” Carlos likes to think he’s a good judge of people, seeing as how quite a lot of them try to kill him quite often and he’s not sure why but this boy gives him good vibes. Not in the sense he isn’t likely to be bad, but in the sense he probably isn’t with the Frontrunner Empire. 

“I’ve got to get to, uh,” he checks “Fux Roh’r?”

The boy starts giggling again, “Right, you’ve got _business_ in Fux Roh’r. I thought you were _nice._ ”

“I am nice!” Carlos wishes he hadn’t said that as loudly, when two hulking bothans whip their heads out of enormous mugs of frothing-strong, acrid green beer to stare at him, lowering his voice to a stage whisper to carry on. “I’m _really nice._ What’s wrong with Fux Roh’r?”

Neon Stripe starts giggling behind his hand again, turning bright pink as he speaks “Dude, you have heard the way you say it right? What kind of weird shit are you into, tying up Twi’lek girls or something?

Carlos can’t stop the blush - oh _god._ “No, god. No. No, I just.”

He needs to think of something fast.

“I’m with the Midfield and I’ve got a meeting and it’s urgent. Please.” That wasn’t the strategy he was intending to come up with, watching Neon Stripe’s eyes go wide and the giggly pink drain out of his face.

“Fuck off, really?” The boy’s hissing now, shuffling closer to Carlos.

“Yes.” He says it with a shrug, no taking it back now and if he’s about to be shopped to the Frontrunners then well, he’s got three hours to get this done either way. 

“What kind of _Midfield_ business have you got in Fux Roh’r?” Neon Stripe doesn’t really look like he’d be an informant. He kind of looks like he can’t get a sentence out without laughing or misspeaking the words but probably not a _great_ idea to explain here on this street.

“I can’t _tell you,_ obviously. I don’t know who you are. But it’s really urgent, please.” Carlos doesn’t know if he has any actual persuasive powers but he tries to put everything he can into his voice. “If you can get me there, I can get you paid.”

The boy eyes him, some kind of nervous tension tearing another high-pitched laugh out of him, “Ok. And I’m Lando.”

*****

34 minutes of ratrunning down back streets and they are climbing a tree when Carlos has to ask the inevitable. “What, like Calrissian?”

Lando shrugs, bracing his foot on Carlos’ shoulder to get to a higher branch. “I dunno.”

“I mean, no offense but you don’t look like him.” Carlos whack’s Lando’s ankle, “Stop standing on me for fuck’s sake, you’re so dusty.”

“Nah, I get that a lot.” Lando finally moves his foot and Carlos has an irrational thought about missing the pressure, somehow as reassuring as it was annoying. “And sorry, look, I’m not tall enough for this - we just need to get over that wall.”

“Ok well, let me get up there and have a look.” Climbing in a cape is ridiculous but Lando was right, the streets are too crowded between buildings and marquees and the endless forest that makes this planet thick with trees.

“They call it the Green Hell, you know,” Lando says conversationally.

“Thanks for the tourist information - I don’t have time for the full guidebook, I’m afraid.” Carlos hauls himself up another branch and, oh, he’s just had the absolute _worst_ idea for how to get over there. 

“Do you know why, though? Ow, what are you doing to me-” Lando isn’t taking kindly to being unceremoniously shoved along the branch to make it bend and Carlos isn’t keen either, to be fair but time is ticking. 

“Is it good? Ok jump when I do and sorry, this is going to suck-” Carlos jumps before he even finishes talking, grabs the back of Lando’s cape just in case and hopes the greenery on the other side isn’t too spiky as he gets a foot on the wall and drags them both over.

The landing is inelegant. He’d meant to roll them, saving limbs and hopefully dignity but they go into something deep and mossy and it throws him off-foot, sends them tangled onto the ground. Lando somehow ends up on top of Carlos and his cape is over _both_ of their heads, which is a hell of a sensory experience with someone you’ve literally just met. 

“Hello.” Lando laughs again, which is almost frightening when his mouth’s that close to Carlos’ ears, before he rolls off and away. “Yeah it’s pretty good, especially for a trip to Fux Roh’r.”

“Ok well maybe tell me after I’ve met Ren, it’s kind of important I do this by like seven standard time and I don’t even know how long that is.” The stress is slowly building in him, despite the fact Lando’s actually quite a good distraction.

“Wait, Ren?” Lando offers him a hand to get up, “As in Ren Ault? What the hell kind of thing are you doing - you’re _definitely_ Midfield, right? This isn’t something shady?”

“Yes. And yes.” Carlos eyes him - he doesn’t have time for Lando to abandon him, now - he’d be more lost than ever now they’ve headed into the depths of the city. “It’s a list of the power settings the frontrunners are using - we think they’ve got a…” he mentally grasps for how to explain it, “we think they’ve got a secret, higher one. Operation: Party Mode, we think it might be their new weapon.”

Lando looks slightly nervous again, a little wide-eyed but not _scared._ Or like he’s going to report Carlos to the Frontrunners, “Ok.”

“I really need it. _We_ really need it.” Lando nods at him, mouth twitching like he might speak but not getting there. “So, please, help me.”

“Ok. Ok, it’s not far.” Lando tugs at Carlos’ sleeve, gets them moving again over the weird, loamy surface this backstreet is sprung like a mattress with. “It’s called the Green Hell because you only come here if you’re crazy or desperate.”

“And it’s green?” Carlos is so incredibly ready to be on a planet with fewer trip hazards.

“ _Oh_ yeah.” Even Lando is slipping up, on mossy steps up to yet another small thicket where there ought to be road, surely. “So which one are you?”

Carlos grunts to avoid saying “probably both” because that feels too cliche and he’s already told this random dude _way_ too much stuff. It’s ok, it’s worth it - even if he gets in trouble. He knew this, when he signed up to a ragtag crew taking on forces bigger than they could possibly imagine - it’s more important than him. 

“Well, this is it.” They’ve got to a door best described as nondescript.

“This is Fux Ruh’r?” He was sort of expecting a more decadent situation, from the hints of debauchery Lando had been dropping while they were scrambling across the city. 

“No,” Lando taps the door, lightly, “Through _there_ is Fux Ruh’r. This is just a street.”

“Right, yes. That makes sense.” He’s not sure if they’re going to part ways here or what, Carlos is pretty sure Ren Ault won’t see him with a random tagged along.

“Are you going in, then?” Carlos feels sort of awkward now, like Lando’s waiting for him to say something.

“Yeah. Err. Thanks for helping me?” Lando grins at that, like Carlos has paid him a compliment. It’s weird and he likes it and this really isn’t the time for a heartwarming moment. “Anyway, gotta go talk to Ren so. You’re a friend of the Midfield, I guess.”

He doesn’t look at Lando as he ducks through the door, in case he says anything else staggeringly stupid when he’s meant to be on a mission.

*****

Fux Ruh’r is _definitely_ no kind of place for a nice boy or possibly even a really nasty one. Carlos has seen body parts he can’t even identify but he knows aren’t usually on display doing things he’s trying really hard not to mentally catalogue. Head down, eyes forward he feels like he’s dodging through a sea of flesh to follow after Ren.

Not that that’s his real name, clearly. Or the real Ren, Carlos is running after a droid whose attitude is so dismissive it’s making him panic a bit because _fuck,_ what if he doesn’t do this. What if this is all a setup and he can’t get the list and Helmut Marko is waiting for him and he gets shot. Carlos hasn’t had enough sex in his life to get shot yet - and also he really wants to, you know, help save the galaxy.

And ideally not get any bodily fluids on his cape. Or well - he doesn’t really know if you’d call what he just dodged a fluid but he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Where are you taking me? I’m on a deadline, here.” Carlos tugs at the droid’s arm, to its visible annoyance. 

“Business is discussed _only_ in the chamber.” The reedy buzz of its irritation winds him up to a dangerously hot anger - he’s not fucking around, here.

“Why’s the chamber forty miles into this labyrinth, then?” The robot whips round at that, face clicking threateningly.

“Would you prefer to get Frontrunner secrets in the open?” Carlos tries not to be too visible about the way he drily swallows. No, he really wouldn’t. 

He decides to stop trying to be tougher than he is and concentrate on not getting involved in something insectoid and throbbing that seems to be his final barrier to a door the droid just went through. 

Through it, mercifully, there is less flesh - just a minimalist desk and a suspiciously luminous pot plant. And someone who might even actually be or at least work for Ren Ault. 

“Hello” he feels like he ought to say something more impressive. 

“This is what you want.” The disc is passed blandly, without the ceremony he feels like it should get. No one shoots him. “Would you like anything else?”

He blinks at the ... _maybe_ Mandalorian or something, he’s not great with accents woman across the table. “No, that’s it.”

“In that case, you should leave now.” She says it with a smile that doesn’t make any sense. It’s a little knowing, even flirtatious and something suddenly feels terribly, terribly wrong. 

“Ok.” His chair scrapes as he stands up and he’s not quite sure how, given it can’t change its expression but the fucking droid looks delighted at Carlos’ discomfort. 

Carlos feels like walking backwards towards the door makes him look like a dork but also something is really specifically off, “I’m going now.”

The woman and the droid keep smiling at him in a way that makes Carlos want to check he still has his blaster. Fuck. He fumbles the door panel behind his back and hopes whatever he stumbles onto behind it isn’t too squishy or biological.

“Bye,” he adds, stepping backwards as he hears the door hiss open - and immediately realising what has happened when something metallic and pointy is right on his spine.

“Oh but we’ve just met, Midfield scum.” This is _terrible,_ he’s going to turn round - the woman and the droid didn’t look that heavily armed, as people to have behind you.

The people now in front of him definitely do, bright red uniforms giving away immediately who they work for. This is, presumably, the bit where he is supposed to get shot but that would be _such_ a waste, now he’s got the list.

And Carlos might not know much about the Green Hell but he _is_ fast. “Yeah, I’m definitely leaving - you guys look like you’re into some wrong stuff.”

When he was walking in, avoiding the tide of anthropologically interesting proclivities, he did notice two things. One, the ceiling is very high - which is useful if you are thinking of, say, crashing a massive chandelier off it to create a distraction. And two, there’s a rail round the edge used to whizz questionable drinks to extremely dodgy characters. Which is _very_ useful if you can jump, have good timing and happen to be in possession of a grappling wire.

The chandelier is the first thing to dispatch, which means getting off a shot without being shot himself - a tricky act at point-blank range but made much easier by clicking in his sleeve to activate the small mine he put near the door earlier. People just _cannot resist_ looking round at explosions.

With a luxurious few milliseconds to play with he takes out the chandelier, shoots the guy who called him Midfield scum because it’s worth the delay, sometimes and jumps at the same time as throwing the grapple. Yes, flying through the air under a tray of whatever it is mon calamari drink isn’t the most _subtle_ or dignified exit but it is quite fun - and his weight is dragging the droid down on the rail enough there are sparks flying, which is making everyone duck instead of shooting at him. 

One quick lap of the room and he’s confident he’s a whole hutt orgy away from the Frontrunner guys, letting go of the wire and dropping to the ground directly in front of an oddly embarrassed-looking Lando, who he's equally confused to see. “Oh shit.”

“I thought you might need help, when things started exploding,” Lando is tugging on Carlos' cape, doing that wide-eyed-but-not-scared thing again, “So I hotwired a ship.”

That’s much too convenient to be something Carlos wants to ask him about right now but also _what the hell._ “Right, yeah that’s handy.”

Running is much slower and more annoying than flying around on a robotic zip wire literally anywhere but particularly anywhere as _stupid_ as a city in a forest. Or a forest in a city, whichever way round it is - it sucks and it’s dumb and if he loses the plans to some scarlet-wearing psychopath because he twists his ankle on a rotting log he’s going to be _so_ pissed off. And also dead, probably.

“Where’s this ship? There are some really, really, really horrible people chasing me.” He’s _never_ wearing a cape again, it’s a nightmare to run in. 

Lando is having no such problems and looks like he was built to run in highly impractical clothing, over tree roots and down steps, “Just over here, I figured we could use the river to make a low getaway.”

“We?” Carlos hadn’t really been planning on bringing the guy, even if he’s been pretty handy.

“Are the really, really, really horrible people not kind of…” Lando trails off as he skids to a halt by a fence and pushes buttons on the gate keypad, “likely to get - oh god-” the blaster fire makes the point for him. And yeah, Carlos guesses once you aid and abet the rebellion once, let alone get caught doing it, then you’re kind of all-in these days.

It’s a _really_ nice ship. Too small to be a cruiser, with the kind of mean-looking shuttle wings that hint at maneuverability. Which is good, because since it’s also bright orange they’ll be needing to dodge stuff.

He’s definitely testing the blaster-proof coating on this cape so when Lando gets the ramp open they don’t waste any time going up it. “Is it armed?”

Lando laughs at him, “I don’t know, it’s not mine - let’s fucking _leave_ and then we can look?”

Ok, that is a fair point - and Carlos likes an order of priorities that includes ‘staying alive’ near the top. Lando’s already rushing down the corridor, as the ramp closes with a satisfyingly solid hydraulic clang and Carlos, it turns out, also likes people letting him know where to go.

It’s only as he’s sitting down in the co-pilot’s seat that he suddenly wonders if this is a trap. If Lando could have been put in front of him specifically to help Ren Ault betray him. If he’s secretly with the Frontrunners - he’s a lot younger than Carlos, after all, he might be one of those kids they brainwash in the Tauro mines. Fuck.

(But then, Carlos would know that that can change. And second chances - or fifth or sixth lives - are quite important to him.)

“You’re not going to betray me in some horrible plot twist, are you?” Honesty has been working quite effectively for him, so far.

Lando doesn’t answer for a second, flicking switches and easing the thrusters up as something hits them so hard the ship shakes and Carlos tries not to look jumpy. He’d known there was a _risk_ this would go quite badly but this is way worse than expected. Was that a _plasma cannon_ he’d just seen getting hauled up as they were taking off?

He’d nearly protested Lando taking the pilot’s seat but figured they could swap in mid-air once they’d taken the crucial first step of a getaway. But the kid’s good, even though presumably he’s never flown this ship before - if they stay low on the river, they’re below detection and small and fast enough to probably make the acceleration out of atmosphere before anyone can throw up a shield tight enough to stop them. It’s not like the Ring of Nur’burg is the imperial heartlands, there’s not a lot out here.

“I’m going to check for weapons,” Lando’s doesn’t look away from dodging boats and bridges in front of them, weaving the ship particularly violently to squeeze between two cruisers full of drunken smashball fans of, presumably, opposing teams who are conducting a very impromptu and beer-based naval battle.

“Don’t - we’ll make it out faster with both of us. Where are you even going?” Lando sounds like he’s talking through gritted teeth a bit, “We need to jump as soon as we’re out of the atmosphere, can you make the calculations or whatever?”

Oh shit, yes. “Yeah, ok. We’re going to Wo’king but I don’t know if we’ve got enough fuel - it’s in the Surri system.”

Lando looks panicked, “Yeah we’re not getting that far. I don’t think this ship can even carry that much fuel. Pick somewhere closer - and fucking do it fast because-” the ship rocks, rolling under what’s unmistakably a hit “-I don’t know how to turn the shields on, if it even has any.”

“Ok, ok,” Carlos tries to swallow down the panic, staring at the hyperdrive interface. Where, where, where can they go? Oh wait, he knows - punches in coordinates that aren’t exactly _familiar_ but will definitely be safe from their current problems, at least. “Ok, as soon as we get up, we can go.”

“Cool, we’re going up” - Lando isn’t joking, dragging the ship near-vertically upwards in a way that makes Carlos’ stomach feel like it’s about to drop out, “You can hit it in like four seconds.”

“Right,” Carlos manages to grit out, feeling a bit like his internal organs are in danger. “You know we don’t need to accelerate into it-”

“Just _do it,_ for fuck’s sake!” The ship rolls again and that felt bad, that felt like damage it shouldn’t take and Carlos just really hopes it wasn’t anything important to the navigational systems or hyperdrive as the windshield explodes in lines of stars.

There’s a few moments of quiet, both of them panting in the sudden darkness and quiet of hyperspace. It’s hot in the cabin, thrusters taking all the power in their mad dash and the air conditioning clicks back on quietly in the background, a sudden cool breeze ruffling Carlos’ hair that makes him laugh half-manically.

“Fuck,” Lando mutters, taking his hands off the controls. “Never seen that before.”

Good god, he _did it._ “Seen what?” Carlos is quietly hoping it’s ‘a desperately cool rebel complete a high-stakes mission despite Frontrunner sabotage.’

“Hyperspace - the lights, you know.” Carlos can’t help turning round to stare at Lando.

“You’ve never been in space before?” That makes virtually no sense to Carlos, he’s spent his entire life planet-hopping.

“No - I have, obviously. Just not outside the system.” Lando looks challenging, like Carlos could seriously annoy him by saying the wrong thing right now and with only two of them on the ship, Carlos is pretty sure he doesn’t want to do that. Also it’s kind of irrational but he _likes_ Lando, as well as being pretty grateful to him right now.

He thinks about it for a minute, tries to remember the first time he was _aware_ of going into it, the speed and the strange sense of unreality, your own sense of time coming uncoupled from the way it’s passing around you. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

They’re staring into each others eyes, which feels a little bit odd for this stranger he hadn’t known this morning but then they have spent the last twenty minutes nearly dying together. “Nice flying, by the way.”

Lando looks away, almost blushing, “Thanks - I fucked it with the compressor, I don’t know why I didn’t notice it but that’s why it was a rough start. At least we got away I guess.”

“Hey, if you hadn’t been there, I’d be stuck in imperial detention on the Green Hell for life.” Carlos exhales - that really had been pretty close, honestly.

Lando giggles, half-hiding his face behind his hands again, “Oh, I never finished explaining that.”

Carlos snorts, “Ok, fine - give me the tour, now we’re thousands of lightyears away.”

Lando kind of pauses for a minute, composing himself and then looks at up very brightly, intensely. It makes Carlos think he’s maybe undestimated the guy’s age - there’s something wiser in there than the fresh-faced youth on the surface. “So you only go there if you’re crazy or desperate - but that’s like half the places in the galaxy, right? Especially in the mid and outfield.”

Carlos nods, not really wanting to break the spell - Lando’s speaking with his hands, much more illustrative than he’s been before and he’s not covering his face with them. It feels oddly significant and Carlos is happy to let him have it, while they’re drifting through impossible time.

“You come to the Green Hell cus you’ve screwed up. And you can screw yourself up worse there - you saw in Fux Roh’r, all the smashball guys - or you can be one of the tiny handful who get … I don’t know, _redemption_ is a stupid word isn’t it? But like, that’s what they say.” Carlos attempts to restrain himself from the irrational urge to grasp the hand Lando has half-extended towards him, in the cramped cockpit, gesturing something like ‘hope.’

“Do you think I managed this?” He’s not sure why it matters to him, but rebellions are built on belief - and not alone. 

“Well, you found me.” That isn’t really an answer but Lando is smirking at him and the mood has changed, like whatever slightly eerie thing was sending him anxious for reassurance is dissipated by the relief of having _got away with it._ “Anyway, where are we going?”

Carlos snorts, “You’re trusting. We’ll jump out near Groav, it’s a lap down - actually more like two or three laps down, the Frontrunners are way out of there. We can lay low, send the data and I’ve got contacts in the backmarker systems that can get us back to Wo’king.”

Lando’s eyes are very wide, “Your idea of an escape is to go to the backmarker systems?”

“Well what would you suggest, on half a fuel cell? _They_ weren’t shooting at us.” Carlos can’t help laughing and it’s not because it’s funny, it’s that adrenaline-laughter that has to come out when you’ve been making too many bad choices too fast recently.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Lando’s laughing too, although Carlos has kind of realised that seems to just be his reaction to everything. “I thought I was escaping with some cool, rebel badass but you’re just some madman who’s going to get me killed somewhere four laps down from the rest of the galaxy.”

“You’re not going to _die._ Ay, so dramatic - we’re just going to hang out for some days and then I’ll find Fernando.” Carlos can’t help rolling his eyes, “You’re from the Green Hell, you don’t need to worry about backmarker planets unless it’s dying of boredom.”

Lando genuinely laughs at that, reaches up to fiddle with some switches, “Fair. And I have the feeling you don’t let things get boring for long.”


	2. there is only 'try'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this is his life now. He makes hasty decisions, steals things and hangs out with a guy who definitely doesn’t seem to have his life together. To be fair, Lando didn’t have a lot of other options - accidentally on purpose beating the Empire’s best had very much put the brakes on his speeder pilot career and it wasn’t like there were a huge number of other reasons to hang around the Green Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot be stopped i can only go along with it. sorry this one gets really long and self-indulgently referential lol. it's that mid-section of a star wars where just like, a load of plot happens without many explosions sorry. honestly it's barely even plot. whatever, it's christmas.

“No we don’t have _clearance,_ we just got out of hyperspace - who needs _clearance_ to land on Groav?” Carlos is visibly one second from hitting his head off the control panel, rolling his eyes at the comms microphone.

Carlos is a weird-looking guy. Actually, he’s just a weird guy in general or so Lando’s beginning to suspect, which is either a really good thing for someone you met earlier today and are right now very dependent on for your entire future or a fucking disaster and they’ve yet to find out which.

But either way, a weird-looking guy. His Nurburg-friendly clothes are much too clean, which was what tipped Lando off to him being kind of interesting in the first place, as well as he clearly has _no_ idea who Lando is, which is quite funny when you come from a small planet where you’re kind of famous for racing. And in a bit of trouble, lately, after an ...incident.

Carlos’ hair is standing on end, where he’s been running his fingers through it near-constantly - before they even got in the tree, he kind of looked like he’d fallen out of one. And he’s a clumsy dork, can’t keep a secret to actually, literally save his life and Lando doesn’t exactly want to undress him but he may have to unfasten the cape before he watches the guy fall over it another fourteen times.

“Tell _Claire_ it’s Carlos Sainz and I need to use the transmitter. Yes, that Claire - which other Claire would I mean on Groav?” Carlos makes an agonised noise, “When did you guys become so security-conscious, who even comes out here?”

Maybe this is his life now. He makes hasty decisions, steals things and hangs out with a guy who definitely doesn’t seem to have his life together. To be fair, Lando didn’t have a _lot_ of other options - accidentally on purpose beating the Empire’s best had very much put the brakes on his speeder pilot career and it wasn’t like there were a huge number of other reasons to hang around the Green Hell.

“Let me try,” he bends the microphone towards himself, ignoring Carlos’ protests as he leans in and their heads are way too close together, Carlos chasing the mic. He tries not to blush, this is going to be _awkward_ and he hates doing it but well, better than dying in space isn’t it? “This is Lando Norris, my ship’s running low on fuel and we need clearance to top up.”

His voice cracks on the last bit but at least they’ll know it’s really him, Carlos staring at him like he’s just turned inside-out or something. 

There’s a second of crackling, then “Of course, Mr Norris. We’re preparing hangar 4, you’re cleared to enter the atmosphere.”

Lando’s quite glad he manages to press the acknowledgement button and close the comm link before Carlos says, loudly, “What the _fuck?_ ”

“I’m err - I won some racing. Before. It got a bit difficult, recently - but the backmarker systems love Nurburg racers so I figured it was worth a try?” Carlos is still staring at him and his mouth is unable to stop talking for some reason. “I wasn’t supposed to beat the Imperial pilots but… you can’t, can you? You can’t just _not race them_ and anyway, they fucking suck so _obviously_ I needed to beat the Frontrunners but they didn’t take it very well, so I guess I’m with you guys now.”

Carlos makes a long, weird noise like he’s exhaling every atom of air that’s ever been in his body. “Ok, so that is why you can fly like this.”

Lando shrugs. It’s not like it’s really something he’s ever really had to _work_ at, per se - the techniques, for sure but it’s always just been something he can do, feeling a ship out as soon as he gets in the cockpit. “I err, I thought you were dressed like me as a like…” he can’t actually say it, it’s just too cringeworthy.

“As ...a fan?” Carlos is giggling, “Oh wow, this is so funny, oh why - why do things like this happen?”

Lando can’t stop himself laughing, even as he kicks Carlos to concentrate on helping him land, “A _bad_ fan, you don’t even have the stripe and it’s totally the wrong blue.”

“You will be ok, in the Midfield,” Carlos says it very seriously, looking across and Lando can’t help meeting his eyes despite the fact he really ought to be looking at the planet beneath them, “We need good pilots at Wo’king.”

Lando has to look away before it gets too intense - or he crashes the ship, “Err, good? I mean, can’t really do anything else now, can I?”

Carlos looks sombre, sighs when Lando dares to glance over, even as the hangar entrance looms. He can land this, even if he’s pretty sure that last bad hit before they got to hyperspace might have screwed the struts. 

“So what’s on Groav?” The landing is clunky as hell, that definitely was _one_ of the struts and now everything’s off-kilter. 

“Mmm, well - I need to get to Claire, I think she’ll still help me. She used to be in the Midfield but disappeared out here a few years ago.” Carlos looks like he’s squaring his jaw, ready for what definitely doesn’t _sound_ as straightforward as the way he said it and Lando can’t help nervously giggling. “It’ll be ok. We’ve got what’s important.”

Carlos generally touches himself a lot, Lando’s noticed - plays with his hair and rubs at his own shoulders for self-comfort but there’s no mistaking him putting a hand over the pocket the data’s presumably in. This guy, for a rebel, is not even _slightly_ subtle. 

“So you’re gonna, like, send it to your friends? And then we get a new ship… somehow?” The one they’re in shifts suddenly, unsteady on whatever’s propping it up still and Carlos slides across the cockpit onto him, “Fuck! Argh, you’re heavy.”

“Sorry.” Carlos looks sheepish, trying to prop himself on the console to get up, “We should get out of this.” 

“Really, yes- fuck, what are you doing?” Carlos has fallen over his own cape and back onto Lando, “Oof.”

“ _Sorry._ Argh.” Carlos fumbles with the clasps, manages to actually detach it before trying to get off Lando again - which involves a lot of wriggling, “This fucking thing, how have you not gone insane?”

Lando, attempting to breathe despite the man on top of him making that incredibly difficult, reckons it’s worth the expended oxygen to bite back “I clearly fucking have.”

*****

Outside, the damage looks much worse. In fact, it’s making Lando feel a bit sick that they went into hyperspace in a ship that’s half orange, half burn mark. “Wow, we really messed this up.”

“Eh, it probably belongs to some idiot.” Carlos ducks as he closes the ramp, like he’s assuming something might fall on him. 

“It definitely does now.” Lando shudders, decides to stop looking at it, “Ok, where now?”

“Claire. I know where she’ll be, there isn’t much to this place.” Groav is, from the limited amount he can see out of the hangar doors, dusty and flat and Lando didn’t think he’d ever miss all the trees but there not being _any_ here is weird. It smells dry and like burnt spaceship and it’s suddenly all hitting him that he’s left home in the clothes he’s wearing and the Frontrunners want to kill him. 

Everything turns a little bit blurry for a second, which is maybe the dust and he can hear his own breathing very loud in his ears suddenly, which might be the different atmosphere and also Carlos is suddenly in front of him and gripping his arms.

“Fuck, breathe - Lando. You’re ok, we’re ok. It’s just a boring planet, nothing’s going to happen here. We’ll be ok, I’ve got friends - you’re safe.” He tries to focus on Carlos, while not really listening to the words, as his breathing stops speeding up and slowly, shakily calms down.

It probably takes less than thirty seconds from start to end but leaves him feeling weird. “Sorry. It all just kind of hit me, you know?”

Carlos looks relieved, something panicked still in his expression, “Yeah. Also we’re not really ok and the Frontrunners are definitely after us.”

“Thanks Carlos, that’s unbelievably helpful.” Somehow, sarcasm is actually useful. If he can make jokes about it, he can probably actually do it. 

“It will be ok. Or the whole galaxy is fucked, so it won’t matter anyway.” Carlos’ motivational speech game definitely needs working on but he has a very reassuring smile, for someone who is clearly incredibly unhinged. 

And it’s true, anyway. Lando would’ve been fucked if _hadn’t_ done this so might as well get on with whatever they’re doing.

“Ok, so, where’s Claire?” 

“Very good.” Lando doesn’t know why - aside from the insane situation and the near-death experiences and the fact he’s completely reliant on this dude - but it is very important to him that Carlos praises him, can’t stop his cheeks heating up slightly. “She’s at the factory, assuming she’s still here. We’ll need transport but it’s not far.”

*****

Sitting in the speeder, wind whipping through his hair to dishevel it nearly as badly as Carlos’, feels a lot better. If Lando doesn’t think about all the ways his life has just become even more incredibly messed up, he could just be having a relatively nice day.

It probably helps that they grabbed some sort of sweet, sticky fruit on their way out of the landing port and he’s had half a canister of water that they shared between them. Carlos looks less jumpy, too and even managed to get into the speeder, cape reattached against the cold desert breeze, without causing an incident.

Lando was kind of indignant the dude took the driving seat - like, he has clearly just proven this is his thing - but Carlos really isn’t bad at all. Ok, they’re flying through open desert not dodging other speeders or whatever but there’s a confidence to the way he controls each turn that almost makes Lando a bit envious.

“See? This whole place is just miles of nothing.” Carlos is waving an outstretched hand at him and Lando only half-rolls his eyes before passing over a piece of fruit. 

“Keep your hands on the controls, if you’re gonna insist on driving.” The fruit is pretty good, as much as Lando feels like he needs to wash his hands pretty urgently. 

“Nmm, what are we going to hit? Some air?" Carlos is more of a risk-taker than Lando had him down as, at first. "They might be a bit weird when we get to the factory, it's been a few years."

"Weird like shooting us?" He'd hoped that wasn't likely to happen again so soon. 

"More like… weird like family you haven't seen in awhile." Carlos says it like he has no idea what that actually means, which isn't very reassuring. "Are you armed?" 

Lando shakes his head - he's never really been much of a blaster guy and ever since people started pointing them at him he's even less fond. 

“Ok good, that’ll make them less, uhm, hostile.” Lando chooses not to bring up the fact Carlos had _seemed_ pretty heavily armed on Nur’burg. Maybe it doesn’t count if you’re Midfield. 

There’s a building looming on the horizon, plain and grey against the rustier-toned dust and it feels weirdly reassuring, like at least they are actually going somewhere even if he has no idea what’s going to happen when they make it there. 

Carlos slows the speeder as they get closer and Lando can make out a figure standing outside the building, dwarfed by the sheer scale of the monolith behind them. Once they’re a few hundred metres away he can tell it’s a woman, dark bob of hair shifting in the wind and wearing an elegantly severe blue dress, a long cloak protecting her from the chill out here. That must be Claire, then, he assumes.

The speeder stops in a cloud of dust and he just about has time to notice a small droid rolling over to them before Carlos is jumping out and running over, “Claire!”

If Lando had been worried there might be shooting, he suddenly understands what Carlos meant earlier when instead they hug like old friends. “Carlos Sainz, it has been a very long time since you were so many laps down.”

Something nudges Lando’s ankle and he looks down to see the blue and yellow droid budging up to his leg like an excited loth-kitten. It seems irrational to pat its rotating dome but it’s not like it’s the most insane thing he’s done in the last few hours, “Hello, you.”

“FW18, leave him alone-” Claire gestures at the droid, “Sorry, he likes new people.”

“It’s ok.” Lando isn’t sure what else he should say, sort of stutters on trying to introduce himself and just stops.

“And who’s this?” Claire addresses the question to Carlos, while clearly taking in the fact they’re wearing almost the same outfit, “And what were you doing on Nur’burg? No, don’t tell me out here, we have Deychin tea and less dust indoors. Somewhat, anyway.”

Claire seems kind of wry, old enough to be Lando’s mother and with a resilient quality to her that says she’d be a shoulder to cry on but could also definitely probably kill him or at least knows a wide-ranging network of people who will, which is exactly the kind of person they probably need right now. Getting out of the cold desert seems like a very good plan, too so he’s beginning to trust fairly unquestionably in this person’s leadership over Carlos’ more chaotic approach.

Through the smaller hatch-gate in the blast doors, the factory is dark and huge. He can’t see very far back, what seems like an endless collection of half-dismantled old fighter ships blocking the view. Most of them looked like they’d been wrecked, then carefully stripped for parts by someone who knew what they were doing. 

“Do you still have that encoded transmitter? I’ve got data I need to send to Wo’king.” Claire laughs wryly, like she knew Carlos would be asking for things.

“Of course, it’s never a social visit with you.” Claire sighs, “And it’s _urgent,_ I know.”

Lando can’t quite work out their relationship to each other but Carlos has that I’m-sorry-but-not look that Lando’s getting quite familiar with, some kind of ‘I wouldn’t be rude like this but the galaxy needs saving’ brush-off that’s charming enough to get him all kinds of things.

Claire pushes a button, speaks towards a panel on the table where a steaming tea set is intensely calling to Lando’s numbing feet. “George, Carlos is here” - there’s an audible whoop from the speaker - “And he needs the transmitter, can you sort it out with him?”

The noise that follows is more incoherent excitement than anything else but Lando gathers that, yes, it will get sorted. “Who’s George?” 

“Ah, I’ll explain it all to you while they’re fiddling with encoders - it would be a tragedy to waste the tea.” Claire sits down, draws her cloak slightly more around herself, “Come. Carlos knows his friends don’t escape without a little interrogation.”

Carlos mouths “sorry” at him but still has that not-really-an-apology expression and also looks a bit like he’s going to laugh. Lando’s wondering who the other friends are, now - with a completely irrational surge of jealousy over the idea Carlos knows other people because of course he does. Lando knows other people. Knew other people, maybe, before he got in trouble and then involved in all this.

There’s a clanging somewhere in the midst of the factory floor that Lando gathers is a door swinging open and then some running footsteps that echo off the enormous ceiling before a tall man skids into view from behind a mangled X-Wing. “Carlos!”

“George,” Carlos’ accent mashes it - Lando has no idea where the hell the guy’s from but he talks a bit like he’s eating the words. He gets another irrational flair of envy that they hug, which is mostly just that he wouldn’t argue with a bit of cuddling right now. It’s been a really long day, after all. Sitting down in one of the spare, wooden chairs opposite Claire lets him duck his head enough to hide it, he hopes.

“It is good to see you,” Carlos claps George on the back, “But I have-”

“Urgent. Data. Yes, the usual - it’s fine, tell me about it on the way up. We’ve had to move the transmitter so I hope you like heights.” George is about six inches taller than Lando, has enormous eyes and is grinning delightedly to see Carlos, which has perfectly reasonable explanations like the fact the backmarker planets are fucking _boring_ and is also annoying him much more than it should.

“Ah, I love you George - always on point.” Carlos claps him on the back and Lando really struggles not to clench a fist or something, “Lando, you wait here - we won’t be long.”

George glances over at Lando, then does a double-take and he really _hates_ being recognised but actually, it makes him feel a bit smug in this specific moment. Famous on a boring planet is enough to make George give Carlos a _very_ interrogative look that’s incredibly soothing to Lando’s ego, even if he’s being absolutely ridiculous.

It’s enough he turns back to Claire, who looks incredibly amused by the entire situation. “I think George is a fan,” she says quietly as the paid move away. “How has a Nur’burg racer ended up with the Midfield? Carlos wasn’t trying to impersonate you, was he?”

Lando shakes his head, feeling weirdly intimidated. Like a job interview, but much nicer as Claire pours him a vapour-flowing cup of sweet-smelling, golden and most importantly to Lando, _hot_ tea. “I got in trouble with the Frontrunners on my own, then he just turned up.”

Claire laughs, “Ah yes, he does that. We don’t get many from the Midfield out this far, of course but Carlos is almost a regular.” She pauses, cradling her mug in both hands and inhaling the steam, “When you go somewhere to be forgotten, you can’t be surprised when people do.”

Lando doesn’t have a reply to that that isn’t about five million questions so takes a sip of his tea instead. “So what got you to come along with this idiot?”

Maybe he shouldn’t tell her. But then, they’re sending the all-important data through her transmitter, so presumably Claire can be trusted. “He was lost on Nur’burg. And I’d been kind of looking for a way out, y’know, cus I caused a load of trouble and I didn’t expect anyone from the Midfield to ever come out there so it was like _perfect_ timing. And then a load of Tifosi turned up so we had to get out quick so I haven’t really had a chance to think about it much since, I guess.”

That felt like too much word vomit. But Claire just smiles wryly again, “He could do with someone to get him out of trouble. Carlos was fresh out of the Tauro mines when I was still ...well, before we dropped down a few laps, here.”

Lando tries not to look too shocked. Carlos is _ex-Frontrunner_? 

“Oh, don’t be judgemental. He’s been Midfield longer than you, after all.” Claire takes another sip of tea, laughs, “and you’re all new compared to me. Carlos is a good man.”

Lando doesn’t really want to think about the fact it doesn’t matter what kind of person Carlos is, he’s kind of stuck with him, so decides to change the subject. “What do you guys do out here?”

“Junknetting, retrieval, stripping for parts - the Midfield runs on old tech, the Backmarker systems are dotted with places like this. You have enough space battles, debris goes drifting off and we’re the ones that catch the scraps.” That makes sense, looking round the factory.

“Is it just you and George?” FW18 chirrups by his knee, “And err, the droid.”

Claire looks like she’s about to answer when the door clangs again and Carlos and George are noisily back, midway through what sounds like a friendly argument. “You _cannot_ do it in 12 parsecs, don’t talk rubbish.”

Carlos cuffs George round the back of the head as they walk up, “ _You_ cannot do it in 12 parsecs. I will.” 

“Listen to this maniac, he thinks he can do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs - he shouldn’t be let out on his own.” George sits down next to Lando, then eyes him shyly, “I mean, do _you_ think you could do it?”

Lando nearly laughs but he’s trying really hard to get control of his nervous giggle tendencies after Carlos pointed it out, a roast he didn’t really need in the middle of hyperspace with a stranger. “It’d be fun to try.”

George huffs, throws a hand up, “You know what, you’re right, you guys do make a good team - you’re both insane.”

Carlos sort of collapses into the remaining chair, nearly tilting it over. “ _Ay._ I am exhausted.”

“You can stay here, tonight. You’re not going anywhere from Groav after the landing port's closed for the day anyway - no, what _else_ do you need, then?” Claire is resting her forehead on the palm of her hand, elbow on the table and looks equally fond of and annoyed by Carlos.

“Fernando. We need a ship to get back to Wo’king.” Lando gets the distinct feeling whoever Fernando is, he’s not the galaxy’s most popular man by the way both Claire and George groan.

“I know where he is. I’ll drop him a line on my personal code later, warn him you’ll be coming.” Claire grimaces, “But you are going to him, he is _not_ coming within fifty clicks of here. I’m not rebuilding again.”

That sounds… bad. Lando raises an eyebrow at Carlos, who flaps a dismissive hand at him, helping himself to tea with the other. “We will go - thank you. Ah shit, I needed this tea.”

Claire gets up, pats the table like she’s resisting the urge to ruffle any of their hair, “I’ll set you up some beds - it’s a bit basic but better than closing your eyes near Fernando.”

FW18 budges Lando’s leg before rolling off behind Claire and Lando has an irrational thought that they could just _stay here_ and not go off trying to get killed by anyone but Carlos does seem really certain about needing to save the galaxy and things.

Also when George reaches across the table to pat Carlos’ arm and say he’s missed him, Lando has a strong urge to grab the Midfielder up and speed away _right now._ Which isn’t fair because Claire and George are helping them and he doesn’t own Carlos but Lando’s really struggling with sharing the person he’s totally dependent on, it seems. 

Later, under a thick tauntaun fur and lying on what feels like it must be Naboo silk cushions that say Claire hasn’t _always_ been a junk merchant, he feels both very safe and very stupid having a whispered conversation with Carlos. They’re in a side-room, impromptu beds a few feet from each other and although Claire and George have disappeared to their respective quarters the space seems to echo. 

“Where are you even from, anyway? Your accent is so weird.” Lando doesn’t see the small cushion coming, in the dark, until it hits him in the face.

“Corellia. So is Fernando, _don’t_ tell him he sounds _weird._ ” He’s not sure why, maybe his stint in the Frontrunners but Carlos really hadn’t seemed like he’d be from some backwater system. It makes Lando feel a bit less wrongfooted, if someone from Corellia can end up in the Tauro mines and then… presumably quite important, in the Midfield?

“And what do you do in the Midfield? I should have asked you this earlier.” He really should have, throwing the cushion back to where he roughly thinks Carlos is and getting a satisfyingly annoyed noise on impact.

“I’m, err.” Carlos pauses much too long, “Are you, err, joining us?”

“I guess so.” Lando realises after he’s said it that that’s the wrong level of commitment - he can’t see Carlos but he knows that’ll be bringing in the steely, shut-off edge the guy sometimes seems to have, every time he’s not sure if he can trust someone. Specifically, every time he’s not sure if he can trust Lando. “I want to - if you’ll let me.”

Carlos audibly exhales and Lando can _hear_ his grin, “Yeah, yeah we’ll definitely let you. I’m a captain - we need good pilots, like I said.”

Lando can’t help giggling, “Ok, cool. I’d like that.”

Carlos’ muffled “me too,” shuffling around in his blankets, is extremely reassuring. It turns out just knowing he’s not in danger of being abandoned in some Backmarker system, having just hastily abandoned his entire life, is enough to let Lando drift into a warm, comfortable sleep. He dreams about a planet covered in snow and endless, careening asteroid fields and only wakes up twice to Carlos kicking him, clearly not resting as peacefully.

*****

The next morning Claire and George hug them both a lot before they leave, loading up the speeder with generous canisters of food and water. Lando gets proactive and hops in the driver side because he’s pretty sure he can navigate across a flat desert using Carlos’ locator, even if he doesn’t exactly know the way.

Carlos stops before he jumps up, looking back at definitely, specifically, Claire. “You could come back. We need you.”

She shakes her head. “Not now. We will, but things need to change.”

Carlos makes an exasperated sound, “I know.”

“You can make it happen. May the Force be with you, both of you.” Lando tries not to wrinkle his nose - she sounds like she means it but he hasn’t heard _that_ old superstition for a long time. 

The speeder judders as Carlos gets in too fast, pulling the door-hatch shut a little roughly, decisive, like he might not leave otherwise. “You too. We’ll see each other again.”

Lando doesn’t look back while he’s easing up the throttle, feeling a bit weirdly emotional. It’s not his fault everyone else is so _dramatic_ about all these, he guesses, genuinely dramatic and high-stakes things they’re doing. 

“Do you really believe in the Force?” Flying the speeder instantly makes him feel better, more assured - this is what he’s _meant_ to do. 

Carlos makes a mumbly noise, rubbing at his own face, “Ah, probably? Maybe. It’d be handy if there was something on our side.”

“I’d rather trust myself.” Lando kicks them up a few clicks of speed, the cold air streaming over them much easier to handle now they’re kitted out in the more subtle grey wool and furs of this sort of system. Even if he does miss the neon stripe already - it’s his _thing,_ dammit.

Like Carlos can read his mind, he chips in completely unprompted with “You look good in grey. Cosy, you know.”

“I just couldn’t stand watching you fall over the cape any longer.” He _will_ be getting it back, packed somewhere safely in the factory. “So what do I need to know about Fernando?”

Carlos groans, albeit in a fonder way than George and Claire had last night, “Just let me do the talking, is probably the best thing. And hopefully nothing will explode before we can leave.”

*****

They’re in a junker market, which is actually just about the most comfortable place for anyone who’s ever had to repair their own speeder and it seems like Carlos kind of feels the same - makes sense, for some Corellian miner kid. Still, Lando can’t resist giving him a bit of rib, “You take me to the _nicest_ places.”

“Mmm? Oh, come on, you love this. I saw you staring at those half-burned Frontrunner capacitors. And yes, they are as good as you think.” Carlos is grinning at him and now they’re on their own again, Lando feels more certain about the idea they’re becoming _friends_ not just him getting drafted in as a sidekick to someone who probably doesn’t really need or want him there.

“How would you know?” Lando half-thought about asking Carlos about the Frontrunner thing, while they were on their way here but there hadn’t seemed like a convenient point in the conversation to be like ‘ _hey did you used to be one of the bad guys?_ ’

“You are not the only one who knows how to steal a spaceship.” Carlos grabs his shoulders, pulling them close to avoid getting separated by the crowd as he pushes them towards a tunnel under or through the maze of buildings and tents and stalls. “Now just… try to ignore about half of what he says.”

Fernando’s… lair or whatever this is has none of the scruffiness of the rest of the planet - stepping out of the tunnel feels almost like going back to Nur’burg, lurid colours of blue and red and gold bursting from every surface. Carlos looks at him, closely, over their joined shoulders and if he’s wondering if Lando’s intimidated, he needn’t because he can’t stop grinning. This is _awesome._

“ _Don’t get excited,”_ is hissed into his ear seconds before a man who looks uncannily like an older Carlos, half-wearing flight overalls and an oil-stained vest, bellows a greeting to them while jumping down from a heavily-chromed, ultra-sleek transport.

“Is good to see you!” The guy definitely has the same accent as Carlos, “What ship did you wreck this time?”

Carlos somehow manages to shrug while being pulled into a crushing hug, “Idunno.” He flails a hand at Lando - “washis.”

“It was _not._ ” Lando can’t stop himself bringing a hand up to half-hide, that having come out altogether too loud, attracting the intense scrutiny of the guy he assumes is Fernando. “And we didn’t wreck it, it got shot at.”

Carlos glares at him like he’d somehow intended Lando to get brought into the conversation - or wrestling session or whatever’s going on - without saying anything. 

“Who is this?” Carlos is glaring harder, like this is exactly what he’d wanted to avoid, while presumably-Fernando looks positively feral.

“A rookie,” Carlos laughs but not like there’s something funny, “He’s coming to Wo’king with me.”

“Aaaaah,” Fernando is instantly distracted, walking away, “You need a ship to get to Wo’king, no doubt fast and you only have a tenth of the credits to even buy passage on a freighter.”

“Why does everyone seem to know exactly what you’re here for?” Lando hisses it at Carlos, trotting to catch up with where the other two are heading. 

“I told you I knew people here.” Carlos elbows Lando, hard, “Now shut up. Fernando! I know you have some hunk of junk here you can’t wait to get rid of because it’s caught up in ten kinds of dirt. No, you’ve probably got twelve.”

Fernando stops, turns round. “I have _one_. One ship so cursed it has dogged my life for months, I regret ever entering the sabacc game I won it in and the sight of it disgusts me.”

“Exactly!” Lando doesn’t feel anything like as enthusiastic as Carlos sounds. 

“You will be dogged by everyone from Brackli to Mara N’ello, there are probably even people from Indica who would shoot this thing on sight. It will give me enormous pleasure to pass this problem on to you.” Fernando’s grin is extremely frightening, framed by a beard more elegant than his outfit suggests.

“Is it fast?” Carlos’ priorities are at least in order.

“It is a disaster. You will love it.” Fernando spins on his heel and starts walking quickly again, before stopping abruptly to push at a door panel like he has a personal grudge against it and going through so aggressively it feels they’re pulled along like leaves in a gust of wind. Lando gets the feeling that probably happens a lot around this guy.

“This is, without question, the best ship in the galaxy,” Fernando gestures broadly at the cruiser, which looks like it might fall apart if you touch it.

“It’s a heap of _shit.”_ Lando’s glad Carlos said it because someone very obviously needed to. 

“No, the _engine_ is a heap of shit - but the chassis is beautiful,” Fernando sounds like he’s scolding them, as some bit of plating actually _does_ fall off the ship behind, “And it is also the only one you can afford.”

“I love it,” Lando enthuses, “it sounds perfect for getting off this planet.” That really seems like a priority, right now. He’d thought Fernando wasn’t as scary as he seemed, for the first few minutes but now Claire’s warning about things exploding seems much more realistic.

“Then you are most welcome to this albatross.” Fernando pauses to hold Carlos’ shoulder for a second, scrutinising him, “You have twenty minutes to get you and this _Millennium Falcon_ out of here or I am sorry, my boy but someone will definitely have to shoot you.”

Lando’s never heard of a better ship. Honestly.


	3. no such thing as luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you use a blaster?” Carlos knows he’s a decent shot himself but well, there’s no harm in having two people handy with a weapon and there’s probably another one somewhere on the ship, given the previous owner. 
> 
> “Oh is it one of _those_ trips now? I thought this was _cultural._ ” Lando is still scrutinising the display, having seemingly given flying over entirely to Carlos, “It’s not many lifeforms. And no, for the record, I can’t but it’s not that hard is it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the very, very, very long wait. I originally wrote this while having a mental breakdown over Christmas, then had a different mental breakdown for ages that meant I didn't reopen the google doc for months. And this chapter was always going to be the big one, so I had to - how you say - actually think things through and then write them rather than just indulging in the lovely, rambling exploration of space.
> 
> This is very long and I didn't get it beta'd because I really wasn't sure who I could reasonably ask to check my working on coaxium pricing and black holes. But if there may be typos, believe me there was also research. Actual footage of me planning the hyperspace routes: [Charlie_From_Always_Sunny_Pepe_Silvia.jpg]
> 
> I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it, turns out you can grow out of wanting to write Star Wars extended universe books and write entirely different things for a living but the urge is still there, waiting. As you may be able to detect I did a bit of handwaving about some of the finer plot details but if it's alright for JJ Abrams or whatever. (it is not alright)

Carlos insists on the pilot’s side - Lando’s great and all but he _is_ a captain and they need to cross half the galaxy, with only a _small_ detour he’s just thought up and might not tell Lando about for a bit. They’re having to leave fast (which seems to be the only way they do this) and it doesn’t seem like the right moment. Much better in the peace and quiet of hyperspace.

Lando only huffs a bit about getting the co-pilot’s seat and Carlos can’t help grinning at him, “This ship is dreadful.”

Lando laughs, “No, it’s way beyond that - I’m surprised it even turned on. But these things can move, right?”

“ _Oh_ yes, especially with two fast pilots.” Flicking switches overhead, he can’t help glancing at Lando to share a grin, “And it’s _ours now._ ”

Lando turns slightly pink at that, which is quite sweet. Carlos is still feeling a combination of guilty about having had to be woken up in the middle of the night by Lando hissing “fucking hell, _stop kicking me_ ” and very fond of his new friend. 

He kind of has friends in the Midfield - and people like Claire and George and even Fernando, if you can call someone quite likely to get you killed a friend. But people you work with, given what he does, are just that. Carlos normally flies alone. 

There’s no time to get too deep into it, right now because Fernando definitely _will_ make good on a threat and saying twenty minutes means they reasonably have five. Also it might be a wise idea to get off-planet and into hyperspace fast, if this ship really has that reputation.

The hangar doors open as if on cue - and equally well timed, the cockpit window lights up with blaster fire. “Wow, he really wasn’t fucking joking.”

Lando shakes his head, adjusting his seat, “No offense but it’s probably Fernando shooting at us.”

Carlos agrees, even if he doesn’t necessarily want to say it out loud - “You know how to fly these?”

It’s sort of a stupid question, he’s completely certain Lando’s never flown a YT-1300 before and Carlos hasn’t, either, so this is going to be a great joint learning experience for them or possibly death, who knows. He feels much more relaxed either way now the data’s been dispatched to Wo’king. 

“Pretty much,” Lando’s totally nonchalant shrug makes Carlos nearly laugh. At least they’re on the same page about it, maybe. 

“Better leave, then.” Carlos hits what’s hopefully the right combination of buttons, vaguely guessing from half-remembered things a few decades ago, when he’d just been watching from behind a bulkhead as his dad worked the controls. 

Getting lift is difficult, in the narrow hangar space and the thing wants to tilt like it’s on a pin, swinging on every axis but they manage to only glance the door - not a mean feat, given Carlos can’t see beyond the blaster fire. 

If, as they take a wild arc into the sky, he skews them a bit to swing towards where he _thinks_ Fernando is and give the old bastard a scare ...well, he’s only human.

“ _Whoooa,_ ” Lando sounds genuinely impressed, “Hit the throttle, holy shit. This thing rocks.”

“I thought you said it was beyond dreadful?” Carlos risks glancing across to grin at him, as he pulls up the thrusters - Lando could probably just about steer on his own, after all.

Lando pats the console in front of him, “I didn’t mean that, baby. C’mon, I thought we were leaving fast?”

“ _Baby?_ Alright, up past that tower.” Lando slaps Carlos’ hand away from a switch he’s already adjusted as they head up and Carlos has the briefest moment of remembering he used to _enjoy_ flying, snickering at the way Lando’s desperately trying to take over from the co-pilot’s seat. 

Well, Carlos can show him it’s not just Nurburg racers who know how to pilot.

They’re a safe altitude now to be well out of range of anything land-based and there’s not much out here that will have any chance of matching them in the air. Carlos checks the fuel load and offers up a silent votition of thanks to Fernando - who if he has any unnatural powers should definitely be appeased - and decides to have some fun. “Ready?” 

“For what?” Lando has the look he gets behind the controls of anything - it’s the opposite of the occasionally-nervous expression he has otherwise, looks like he’s ready to take anything on and is one cackling laugh away from doing something wild.

“Follow me, hey.” He presses his left foot flat to jerk the ship starboard as he dips his left elbow violently hard, hopes Lando’s got the idea as they turn the Falcon sideways. Carlos grins - although not stupid enough to look round - as Lando flicks off the last alluvial dampers and that’s it, they’re away.

It’s fucking _glorious._ The sheer power of the craft, relative to its weight, with its ridiculous dual controls and multi-directional roll, is incredible. Carlos has never flown anything like it - no wonder these things stopped being made, they’ve probably destroyed more buildings than a Hutt stag do.

Lando whoops when they spin round a comms tower, slaps Carlos on the shoulder and they really need to stop messing around and get out of the atmosphere but yeah, this is cool. “We should go.”

Lando looks round at him, eyes shining and hair slightly wild, “Yeah, there’s gotta be cooler systems to fly this round.”

Carlos can feel himself grinning just as much, “There definitely are - you get us out of atmosphere, I’ll make the jump.

He takes his feet off the pedals, lets go of the yoke to give Lando full control while he swings the lightspeed-jump console towards himself. Carlos has an idea. It’s not a particularly good one and he thinks Lando might not agree with it, so he’s taking the time-honoured recent-best-friend tactic of just not telling him.

On Groav, when Claire had said goodbye to them, it had set him off thinking. The Midfield is short on resources and although he hadn’t looked through the data fully (and probably wouldn’t understand it if he had) everything about Party Mode looked very, very bad. Like, whole field-destroying bad. 

They’ve got some ships and a few factories - and a couple of reasonably safe places but if they’re going to try and break the hold they’ll need more than that. Like he’d told Lando, it’d be good if they had something on their side. 

“Ok we’re ready to jump,” Carlos pats Lando’s arm, “Do you want to do the honours, once we’re up?”

It’s absolutely because he’s feeling mildly guilty about not telling Lando where they’re going but it’s not like the guy has any connection to Wo’king yet, albeit possibly he has a strong attachment to getting somewhere safe. At some point they probably need to have a talk about how there aren’t any of those, anymore, for them. 

But sending a ship into hyperspace is pretty cool - and it’s something it’s easy to give, in gratitude for Lando tagging along with him. Carlos can remember the first time his dad let him push the lever up and it’s still exciting, the best part of twenty years later.

Lando, however, laughs at him, “You do it, this thing’s enough to control without faffing with that.”

Carlos is mildly put out to have his gift rejected but Lando does have a point, YT-1300s were notoriously hard to fly anyway but this one seems to have been routinely butchered and modified by several extremely _un-_ careful owners that gives it all kinds of interesting tricks. As the horizon of the atmosphere approaches, it’ll only be about sixty seconds before they can get safely away, a haze of dust and ozone the only thing between them and lightspeed.

He checks the calculations a few times, without really checking them - Carlos knows he’s done it right but re-reading the screen gives him something to do as the rusty gradient of atmosphere dissipates into the blackness of space in front of them. There’s something about leaving a planet that’s a little eerie, going out into the emptiness - it’s freeing and somehow unnatural, even for someone who’s lived between stars for so long.

“Ok?” He waits for Lando to look round from where he’s staring out into space, an unreadable expression on his face while the darkness reflects on the blue of his widened eyes. Carlos doesn’t know how old the guy is, exactly but clearly a little younger than him - and there are some moments, like this - where he wonders if it’s not a _lot_ younger, Lando seeming so overwhelmed by some things that have slipped into total mundaneity for Carlos.

But then, if he’d not been in the Midfield for a few years, he’d probably be the same way.

“Lando?” That makes him look away from the glass, clearly distracted enough he’d forgotten what they were doing just prior to the realisation space is _massive._

“What?” Carlos _nearly_ laughs at Lando’s confusion but it feels a bit too mean, ends up smiling at him instead as the other man remembers what’s going on. “Oh. Actually, can I do it?”

Carlos does laugh at that, leans back and gestures at the console, “Be my guest, you little weirdo.”

The cockpit window explodes into lights the same, regardless of whose hand is on the controls and Carlos finds himself watching it in Lando’s face more than he does through the glass.

*****

“I found a cape!” Lando reappears from the innards of the ship, something silvery-blue and fancy looking draped around his shoulders. “It’s not as nice as mine.”

Carlos assesses him, heavy grey wool and fur under the finer fabric, “You look ridiculous.”

“I do _not._ Just because you can’t wear capes.” Lando plonks himself down in the co-pilot’s seat with, admittedly, an enviable control of getting it tangled anywhere. “Why are we coming out of hyperspace already, I thought Wo’king was ages away?”

Ah, Carlos had wondered when he’d have to explain this. “We’re not going to Wo’king - not yet. I thought we could go and try and get ourselves an advantage.”

Lando looks confused, “An _advantage_? Against the Frontrunners? What have you got, a billion credits and a clone army?”

“Sadly, no. We are going to Le Mans.” He’s consciously not looking at Lando because Carlos isn’t sure he can take the eye-rolling. “I know you don’t believe it works. But we don’t have much hope otherwise.”

“What’s even on Le Mans? I thought it was basically abandoned now, after the Frontrunners looted everyone out.” He can see Lando out of the corner of his eye, intensely scrutinising him like he’s got something he’s suspicious about and Carlos honestly has no idea what.

“ _Supposedly,_ the Frontrunners never found the trophies.” Carlos tries to keep his voice steady, “I know it’s maybe an old myth but if anything _could_ help us…”

“You’re scared.” Lando doesn’t say it like a question - or an accusation - he sounds nervous himself.

“Yep.” Carlos can’t help gritting his teeth, locking his jaw as the lines out of the window contract, seem to stutter and suddenly they’re in the emptiness of regular space. “Party Mode is bad, like _if-we-can’t-stop-it-there-might-be-no-way-back_ bad. I just… want to take every chance we can.”

“Ok. But I don’t know shit about all this.” Lando looks more serious than he usually does, more serious than when they were getting shot at.

Carlos sighs, “Honestly, neither do I. Maybe there won’t be anything - but I want to try.”

He stretches his legs, wriggles his toes, while the sublight engines kick on and he tries to remember which pedal’s starboard as they ease towards orbit. “Worst case scenario, we will go on a cultural trip. You haven’t seen most of the galaxy, I am showing you places in return for your generous tour of Nur’burg.”

“Ok.” Lando sort of ducks his head as he says it, like he’s half-nodding to reassure himself, then steadies his nerve to speak. “I expect the proper guided tour.”

“I will try my best.” Carlos doesn’t really know a lot about Le Mans, he’s definitely never been there but he’d read books, comics, when he was a kid. About the things it inspired people to do - impossible feats, beating ridiculous odds. They could do with some of that.

It doesn’t _look_ that inspiring, coming in. There’s scrubland and some wooded bits but nothing in the way of spectacular. Carlos doesn’t miss Lando perking up at the sight of trees, after the Backmarker systems’ wildernesses and decides, given he’s already screwing the guy around a bit by coming here, not to take the piss this time. “I thought there’d be… more stuff.”

“Wasn’t it pretty much levelled?” Lando seems to have a lot more than ‘not knowing shit’ about Le Mans. “The Frontrunners ransacked the place, planet abandoned, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah but I thought…” Carlos guides them down closer to the planet’s surface, taps at the Falcon’s console to scan for buildings. “I thought there’d be more _history_ left, you know. Like this place is meant to be all old?”

For a second he worries the scan isn’t going to show anything, Lando peering at the screen with equal interest. “Oh, there’s something. And lifeforms? About thirty clicks north west.”

Lando sounds almost cynical, like he’d assumed there’d be nothing here and is now extremely suspicious about anything that _is_ on Le Mans. Carlos is a little wary too, to be fair, he’s just started considering quite how bad an idea it might be to turn up on a fairly remote, mostly-abandoned planet and head directly to the first thing they can find, not especially well armed.

“Can you use a blaster?” Carlos knows he’s a decent shot himself but well, there’s no harm in having two people handy with a weapon and there’s probably another one somewhere on the ship, given the previous owner _._

“Oh is it one of _those_ trips now? I thought this was _cultural._ ” Lando is still scrutinising the display, having seemingly given flying over entirely to Carlos, “It’s not _many_ lifeforms. And no, for the record, I can’t but it’s not that hard is it?”

Carlos hums in response because no, point and aim isn’t that difficult but deciding to pull the trigger is a bigger barrier. Maybe it’s better that’s all on him, as they get closer to some tall buildings - or maybe just tall-seeming, for the landscape. 

He realises he doesn’t actually know how to land the Falcon at roughly the same time he needs to do it, so the whole thing is a bit of a mess and Lando has to intervene at one point to stop them pitching forwards into the dirt. Carlos doesn’t know whether to mutter some thanks or just never mention it again, grateful his hair is long enough to cover the way he can feel the tips of his ears burning pink. 

Thankfully, shutting down the ship doesn’t take as much effort and he’s fairly sure they even manage to arm the security system before heading down the ramp. “ _Phwoof,_ ” Lando states, emphatically, “It’s a lot warmer here.”

It definitely is. Carlos immediately commences the drawn-out process of trying to work out how he put all these clothes on, needing at least three or four layers off _immediately._ It’s sunny on Le Mans and everything smells of summer, sweet grassy scents and hot, fresh tree sap and something floral. It’s the _opposite_ of most places he’s ever been, the outer systems not exactly known for idyllic rural scenes.

Lando looks delighted, at the same time as he’s also tearing several layers of wool and fur off, until he’s down to a grey shirt and the _fucking_ cape, which now doesn’t look stupid at all and Carlos isn’t sure whether he’s more impressed or annoyed. Nur’burg might be leafy but - at least in Carlos’ admittedly limited experience - it wasn’t like this, the plants more invasive than they were just _wild_ and beautiful, so he kind of _gets_ what Lando’s looking at.

Carlos hasn’t spent a lot of time around _beautiful_ things. He manages to unbuckle the fur-lined over-jacket, then grapple with a thermal layer and eventually get down to something lighter, keeping the woollen sweater over the shirt, since _he_ hasn’t found any mysteriously fabulous items of clothing in the Falcon yet. 

Hurling their discarded clothing back up the ramp, a problem for later, he takes another look around them. There’s what looks like the remains of an old path or track or something on the port side of the Falcon and that’s probably as good a place as any to start. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous here, before.” Carlos half says it to reassure himself, clearly having the opposite effect on Lando.

“Well it’s _after_ now, isn’t it?” Lando is eyeing him with an unusual wariness, like he’s not quite sure what Carlos’ deal is, here. “So who knows. Unless you do?”

Carlos grimaces, pretty sure now that he can guess what Lando is hinting at. “I don’t. I’ve never been here before.”

That seems to placate the younger man, who follows him when Carlos heads off towards the path. “Did Claire tell you I used to be in the Frontrunners?”

Lando steps on a twig, breaking it loudly behind him and Carlos actually _jumps,_ which is ridiculous. He’s not some scared child.

“ _Yes._ You seem like kind of a shady guy, if I’m honest.” That cuts deeper than Carlos really wants to admit. He’s not a _shady guy,_ for fuck’s sake, he’s just led a complicated life and has a laundry list of issues to show for it. 

He sighs, turns round, grabs Lando’s upper arms to look at him seriously, “I wasn’t _with_ the Frontrunners, I was in the Tauro mines. It sucked, I used to dream about getting rescued by the Midfield every day.”

He doesn’t like admitting this, it sounds pitiable and Carlos prefers to think of himself as an intergalactic badass whose only flaws are not being very good with capes and a minor stress-eating tendency he doesn’t usually have time to indulge. Lando is looking at him with a bit of what can only be described as ‘wide-eyed cynicism’ and Carlos almost sighs with annoyance at whatever brain malfunction makes him carry on talking. “Dreams do not work. So I made it happen and it was also horrible and that is why I do _shady_ things for the Midfield not sit at a desk being polite to droids. You can’t have done nothing _shady_ yourself, on Nur’burg.”

Lando shivers at that, like there might be really quite a catalogue in his past but stays quiet, clearly waiting for Carlos to finish. “I am not going to turn you over to the Frontrunners, idiot. I am on the run from them too, you know this.”

Lando nods at that, visibly swallows and Carlos smoothes his thumbs down the younger man’s biceps, feeling the tension - and a surprising amount of quite threatening strength - before he lets go of Lando’s arms. “I don’t know why, I just think there might be something important here and sometimes a hunch is enough.”

“Like racing.” Lando sort of half-nods as he says it, like he’s trying to make sense of the idea himself and Carlos raises a questioning eyebrow because he definitely can’t. “Sometimes, even if it’s risky and it might not work, you just _know_ what you can do and that it will be right.”

Privately, Carlos has no idea what Lando is talking about but that seems to basically be agreement with him, which he is willing to take, “Yeah.” He exhales, feeling slightly like he’s been doing that a lot lately, “Ok, let’s go see what we can find here other than nice flowers.”

“The flowers _are_ nice.” Lando’s walking alongside him now, rather than trailing behind, “I’ve never seen somewhere like this.”

“The plants seem like they eat people, where you’re from.” Carlos has to hop a fallen tree trunk and the earthy smell, where his hand disturbs the bark, is so full of _life_ \- moss and lichen and gentle, woody decay - that it’s almost weird, overwhelmingly organic compared to the space ports and fuel lines and ships’ cabins he’s used to. Like it ought to be _edible_ or something, the only other things like that he’s touched generally have been. 

“Mmm, some of them.” Lando jumps straight over without touching it, as if to reinforce his suspicions about trees. “So what was the deal here. You know, _before?_ ”

The path is definitely what used to be a road or something, a distinct _surface_ visible under the patches of moss and tall grasses, shivering in the wind and where they’re brushing through them. Lando’s cape is liberally decked in burrs and seeds and Carlos is beginning to see the practical applications of it, as he digs several sharp ones out of his own sleeve.

He can see some tall buildings looming, beyond the next group of trees and although there’s definitely overgrowth on them, there’s a sort of air of _activity._ This has to be what the Falcon’s scanners picked up, which means there are lifeforms, which means there’s a greater-than-zero chance he has to shoot someone in the near future and Carlos _hates_ doing that.

There’s the remains of a metal fence at the edge of the trees, which Lando clambers over with almost absentminded, practiced ease as though it’s something he’s familiar with, over the top long before Carlos can say anything like ‘ _maybe let the guy with the blaster go first?_ ’

He’s still halfway up the fence, not as apparently experienced with hopping over rusty wire as Lando seems to be - Carlos is getting tempted to make some _shadiness_ accusations of his own, frankly - when someone shouts at them. Which makes him panic and try to get over faster because he feels somehow responsible for Lando’s wellbeing and accidentally ends up landing too heavily. Oof.

“Who is it?” Wow, he really _should not_ have done that, doubled over in a way that really won’t help if he does have to shoot anyone. 

Lando sounds amazingly nonchalant when he says “I don’t know, some guy. Like a mechanic or something?”

Carlos gets it together enough to glare at him, “A _what_?”

Lando shrugs while Carlos is managing to straighten out, “I dunno, look - he’s wearing overalls, how the hell am I meant to know who he is?”

Carlos lets his eyes follow where Lando’s gesturing, which is down the length of the building. There’s a row of hangar-style doors, which look variously well-maintained and like they were blasted off their hinges twenty years ago and have only been raided for parts since. And a long, well-swept surface free of plants that has to be a runway. And a dusty breeze, carrying pollen and sweet smells and something rich like oil towards them, Le Mans’ double suns glinting off the top of the buildings as the late afternoon starts to get long.

Mostly, there is someone Carlos _absolutely_ recognises. “Fuck, that’s Jenson Button.”

“What?” Lando looks at Carlos like he’s just announced he can fly or something, “He’s not a real person.”

“Yes he is, he’s there. Hey, Jenson!” It takes Carlos a moment to get the feeling back into his feet, from the drop but within a few yards he’s jogging to a run. In all honesty, _he_ thought Jenson probably didn’t exist anymore - or at least was pretty determined to never be found, worse than Claire or Fernando for total disappearance. 

“Carlos fucking Sainz, what the bloody hell are you doing here?” Jenson, Carlos realises as he skids to a halt at the edge of the scrubland before the building, is pointing a blaster at him. 

“Uhm.” His rather nonspecific plan feels quite stupid, under this sort of urgent scrutiny. “I wanted to see if there was anything still here.”

“There isn’t, you can fuck off now.” Jenson’s tone is friendly but the gesture he makes with his hand relaxedly holding the blaster is not at all. At easily a head taller than Carlos, in what looks like a slightly threadbare old flight suit and with his boots half-unlaced, he _shouldn’t_ be intimidating. Jenson’s an old man, at least definitely compared to him and Lando; there’s more than a peppering of grey in his scruffy, ginger stubble. But there’s something very definitely threatening about an ex-midfielder who once took down the Frontrunners and Carlos feels flimsy in comparison.

“Jenson. Do you think I would come all the way to Le Mans and then leave because you tell me to?” Carlos knows he’s doing his slightly obnoxious thing that gets him called _arrogant_ and _stubborn_ but he really wouldn’t. There’s a galaxy to save.

Jenson seems to consider it. “Who’s the little guy?”

Despite being the only unarmed person in the situation, Lando has for some reason ambled up to where Carlos is standing and makes an annoyed noise at being called ‘little.’

“He’s a rookie. I found him on Nur’burg.” Carlos feels like he ought to throw Lando a bone for some reason, not least for clearly having balls, “Good pilot.”

Jenson laughs at that, “Ah well, aren’t we all? Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m not going to shoot you. What does the Midfield want?”

“Nothing. Well, probably something - but they don’t know I’m here-” Lando _kicks him_ in the ankle “-we’re here.”

Jenson looks amused by the pair of them, re-holstering his blaster somewhere behind his waist. “You’re from Nur’burg?”

“Yeah. Don’t think we can go back.” Jenson is a softie, Carlos knows this - he's barely met him before but he knows that the guy acts gruff and _will_ shoot you but was also notorious for adopting younger members of the Midfield, which he suspects Lando's about to find out about. 

"Hey, not all bad - you got out of Hell. You a racer?" Lando nods, visibly nervous in the face of a man who's gone from possibly shooting them to fatherly in whiplash time. "You'll like this. If you're here, you might as well let me show you Le Mans."

Jenson walks away, back towards the hangars, with a beckoning gesture and Carlos gives Lando a soft shove in the small of his back to get him moving. The walk across the last of the scrub and down the hangars gives Carlos time to think two things: there were lifeforms, plural, on the scanner and also that he can’t believe they’ve found _Jenson Button._

“I doubt you’ve ever seen one of these, out on Nur’burg.” Jenson’s talking exclusively to Lando, which is kind of annoying but also means Carlos is pretty sure he got away with the gormless expression he just pulled because _what the fuck_?

“She’s a Prototype,” Jenson helpfully illuminates as though Lando or Carlos might be spectacularly stupid or more blind than they’d previously demonstrated being. This is, without question, the _sexiest_ ship Carlos has ever seen and he’s had access to some pretty nice options, over the years.

“Does it run?” Lando has stepped forward, fingers a few inches from the Prototype’s bonnet like he’s being drawn to it irresistibly but daren’t touch.

Jenson scoffs, “Of course she runs - you think I’d have her as an ornament?” 

Carlos is barely listening to them. There’s something about the Prototype that _vibrates_ or exudes or radiates something that feels big and ancient and weird. The last rays of sun that are likely to slip between the buildings, red and sharp, are illuminating every perfectly-angled piece of bodywork and the thought of making it run is almost frightening. 

He's never seen one before. They disappeared long before he'd ever been somewhere more exciting than a spice mine and it wasn't like they were commonplace anyway - they came with all the weight of history, of pilots who'd harnessed the Force. 

“I…” Lando trails off, like he was startled by his own voice, swallows. “Uhm. Can? We? With you obviously. Or?”

Jenson full on laughs at him but it’s fond, in a way that makes Carlos jealous - he’s got more shared history with the guy, for fuck’s sake. 

“Fuck off then - but she’s got a kick.”

Carlos doesn’t like the weird pause. The odd tone. The way it feels like clouds that aren’t there cross the sky. But he also isn’t massively superstitious, at this point. And there’s something, something-

“I’m driving.”

Lando glares at him, clearly having realised he had got Jenson’s attention but this is a _Force_ thing and Carlos knows it’s stupid - maybe - believing, yet he does. There’s got to be something out there for the Midfield to use, there’s no point in carrying on without the hope.

Lando bites his lip for a minute, like he’s about to argue, looking Carlos dead in the eye and then nods, “Ok.”

A laugh breaks the tension, as fond as it is harsh and Jenson smacks the bonnet of the prototype, “So solemn, you lot, these days.:

“Well yes, it’s getting to the end of times, no?” Carlos tries to make it funny but doesn’t quite carry it off, hoisting himself into the cockpit. 

The Prototype rocks slightly, as Lando hops in from the other side, jostling into the passenger seat. “Where do we go?”

Carlos looks up at Jenson, not really having thought about that while he was so entranced by the ship, barely even thinking what it could do. He’s pretty sure Prototypes are for ground-skimming, more powerful than any speeder but not exactly airborne craft, nippy and frightening using old, organic fuels in howling engines. 

Jenson almost laughs at them, again, eyes glittering with something that’s like proxy-excitement, eager to see what they make of it like he knows this is going to blow both their tiny, space-hick little minds. Carlos strokes the dash, reaches down by his knees to find the starter switch and see displays blink to life, something hum under his fingers as though the ship’s taking that first gasp of breath after breaking water - almost unnerving _alive._

They’ve all stopped speaking, like the thrum of the engine starting demands an awed silence but then Carlos remembers he needs to ask Jenson where to go, looks up at him wordlessly, mouth not able to find words.

Jenson shakes his head, like he’s snapping himself out of something, “You’ll know. _She_ knows, once you’re out of the pit lane.”

Something nervous flares in Carlos’ stomach and he sees Lando lick his lips, tongue wet and agitated, out of the corner of his eye. He fumbles the straps, nearly doesn’t find the clip to secure himself in and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, knowing he needs to look up and grab the wheel, that there’s going to be a moment where he eases the throttle forwards that will be somehow irrevocable, the start not something you can do-over, in this ship.

“Cool,” says Lando, sounding not at _all_ cool and Carlos shakes himself, shivers and sets his eyes forward, grips the wheel. Suddenly, Le Mans doesn’t seem that sun-kissed anymore, some cold, dark blue streaks painting across the sky and there’s a chill in the air that’s more than just the tingle across Carlos’ skin.

“The day cycle is fast, here.” Jenson says it quietly, something gentle to his voice as though they’ve both been a bit obvious in looking at the sky, “you’ll have to go through the night.”

“What these are made for, isn’t it?” Lando sounds only _mostly_ like the bravado is false, an edge of something reckless and eager buried beneath the anticipatory anxiousness.

“That’s the spirit,” Jenson sounds much more sober, less amused than a few moments ago. “Off you get, before I change my mind about letting you crash her.”

Carlos is about to retort that he’s not going to do _that,_ thank you but it feels irreverent, somehow, as though he’s not enough in awe of the machinery. So instead he nods, not looking across at Lando and eases forward the throttle as they glide off with a slinky purr from the engine, the hum of life in the ship intensifying as a shard-like streak of inky purple joins the strokes of navy in the sky above.

Heading away from the buildings, he resists the urge to take it slowly or to look back. The ship _wants_ to go fast, he can feel it - not like easing a speeder up to full power or the grinding process of getting a ship’s sub-light engines on, the Prototype is champing at the bit and each feather-light touch on the throttle sends her galloping forward like the time in the garages had been imprisonment and she wants to _run._

He’s a bit worried that Jenson’s assurance they’ll somehow just _know_ where to go might not work. Carlos isn’t actually sure if he has any Force sensitivity; he’s definitely never demonstrated any cool Jedi mind tricks or whatever, although that would have made life a lot easier and the times he’s thought he’s felt something could easily be put down to instincts over cosmic interference. And it feels like right now, behind the wheel of a ship that’s screaming to reach full-pelt, lights flickering on across the dash as more elements come alive with the acceleration, would be a bad time for his hopeful belief that he _might_ be able to sense something, sometimes, to turn out to be fraudulent. 

He’s not sure what he _should_ be feeling but there’s a tingle, beyond the vibrations of the ship, as Lando quietly mutters “ _woh_ ” and Carlos feels the route stretch out before them. It’s dark ahead, especially as they head into the trees and he feels, more than sees, the way there’s an incline they need to take, rising in a curve to crest between two enormous tree stumps, bent over like they’d once connected in an arch. 

The woods open up, expansive and Carlos takes in a breath, not realising he’d not been, as his stomach drops with the landscape, another curve taking the harshness out of the downward slope. There’s even less light ahead, ship’s headlights illuminating a short range in the inky darkness that doesn’t create enough horizon for the pace.

Carlos flicks the wheel left and then right, avoiding or following something he doesn’t fully see, before braking heavily, the ship rolling sideways, grazing a wall in the turn. Lando’s hand flies out to his arm, gripping Carlos’ bicep as he rights them and accelerates sharply, confident somehow that the way is straight now.

The eerie, purple-tinged beams of the headlights seems to go longer, stretching forwards and the Prototype sings under them as Lando’s fingers loose on his arm and Carlos dares look round, hair whipping across his forehead from the pace they’re bolting on into the night. “Cool, no?”

“Fuck off and look ahead,” Lando’s grinning, eyes bright and Carlos barely realises he’s laughing until the air’s snatched out of his mouth, turning back to what’s ahead of them as the scream of the engine hits full speed and just in time for him to realise there’s something ahead, swerving wildly left and then.

Something happens, something more than the darkness they were flying into passes over the ship and Carlos takes his hands off the wheel like he’s been burned, then there isn’t a wheel at all. He looks round, for Lando and there’s nothing - no ship, no seat, crouched at the edge of water he remembers but must be thousands of lightyears from. Did he fuck up? Did they crash? Is he, of all the stupid things to finally do it, dead?

“Did it work?” He looks round, jumpy - this has to be a dream, he has to be unconscious right now and that’s why he’s looking at someone he hasn’t seen since he got out of the Frontrunners’ clutches.

“Daniil - what?” 

It’s unquestionably his old teammate but not as Carlos remembers him. He’s taller - or maybe just broader, more filled-out, older and tougher looking, a dark blonde goatee looking well-worn in on his face but incongruous to the clean-shaven kid Carlos remembers. 

“Leaving,” Dany smirks slightly, as though Carlos is just being stupid, like he’s talking to a drunk or something, maybe. “Did it work?”

“Uh,” Carlos swallows, touches the cold steel of the dock in front of him. It’s Corellia but it can’t be, he’s at least ten systems away, if he’s still alive. “Well, I seem to be back. Which was not my plan, to be completely honest.”

“Not really, I think.” Carlos exhales - that’s kind of a relief, if he’s honest. The misty air feels too real, too damp, too close - the opposite of the thin, clear atmosphere on Le Mans and there’s cold seeping up through his fingers and the soles of his boots, out of the roughened, ridged steel of the loading pontoon.

“You didn’t leave?” Dany laughs, like that’s a particularly good joke and shakes his head. The flight suit he’s wearing is different, paler and Carlos feels like they’re definitely really talking, wherever he actually is. 

“Like you, I seem to be back.” Dany smiles, ruefully, “But in my case, for real.”

He feels himself laugh, head dropping down and with his eyes closed for a second, this feels less uncanny. “It did - work, that is, leaving. Until now.”

“Is it better?” He looks up at Daniil, decides he’d rather be at a more equal height for this… test, maybe?

“I don’t know - different. I choose, now and I have to live with it.” Dany nods, breath misting in the air in front of him in a long exhale. “And no one holds me back, even if I think - maybe - I might have made a big mistake just now.”

Dany hums, “How can you hope to beat them?”

The air feels wet, like it’s working its way into Carlos’ woollen shirt and he shivers, trying to find the words, “At least no one can tell me I _can’t,_ now.”

Something shifts, before he sees Daniil’s response and he’s suddenly back in the ship, Lando stretching over to haul the wheel right, stop them hitting something Carlos barely sees and he hears himself half-scream, cut off while he tries to get control of himself. And the ship.

“Fuck - what the fuck? Holy shit.” He puts his hands back on the wheel, eases the throttle up as the straight line of the headlights extends in front of them again.

“What the fuck yourself - why’d you take your hands off the wheel? You could’ve fucking killed us both.” Carlos shakes his head, eyes on what’s ahead of them - Lando sounds as furious as he should be but he’s not sure he can explain. “And how the fuck are you wet?”

“I don’t - I don’t know what just happened.” He doesn’t know why accelerating again feels right but something tells him they should get through this place fast, like something’s chasing them.

“You freaked the _fuck_ out of me.” Lando’s breathing heavily, audible even over the shrieking roar of the engine and Carlos is about to say something reassuring when suddenly there’s another kink, this time to the right and he’s too busy twisting them back, ship rolling wildly, to try anything stupid like ‘holding a conversation.’

“Fuck - _what_?” Carlos grits his jaw, righting the Prototype as it rocks wildly and it’s a moment before he can look round at Lando and see he’s coated in a light dusting of snow.

He can’t stop himself laughing - _what_ is this place? “Did you - did you go somewhere?”

Lando splutters, stutters, “I don’t know - I didn’t. I don’t even.” Carlos sees the next corner coming, a wide curve that he brakes into enough to not send the ship rolling, the sweep clean and stable as they turn towards a stripe of dusky red dawn streaking the sky. 

It’s quiet, bar the engine noise as the Prototype wails its way back to full pelt and more rose-gold light shows where they’re going, winding down a hill that’s bathed in increasingly blazing orange notes, before another sharp turn and then they’re threading through rapid curves as the sun threatens to blind them as much as the darkness did, before.

Something hits Carlos’ foot, rolling loose in the bottom of the cockpit and he ignores it, the rapid twisting of the route no doubt sending things sliding. Whatever it is is cold and metallic but not heavy or stopping him using the pedals.

Lando’s clearly experiencing something similar and he wonders if they’ve accidentally triggered an emergency system, fire extinguisher or something, maybe? Until the smaller man scoops up whatever it is from his footwell, less distracted by the need to actual pilot the Prototype and Carlos dares a glance round to see Lando, confused and more than slightly awestruck, holding a trophy. “Wha?”

“We will see when we get back,” is all Carlos manages before he throws them through a series of sliding turns between crumbled walls thick with vegetation, blossoms opening as the sun touches them and thick, sweet scent feeling like it soothes away the witchy liminality of the night.

By the time they get back to the hangars, the sun is high in the sky and what happened in the dark feels unreal, like he must have misremembered it. His shirt has dried under the warmth of gentle, golden daylight and there’s no trace of the snow that had turned Lando’s curls frosty and white, like looking at a future, older version. 

The Prototype seems to know where to stop, Carlos finding himself pulling up abruptly in front of the garage it came from, without really remembering how he knew to do that. He switches the engine off, only the drip of cooling and fan systems still running and sits for a few seconds, hands still on the wheel, before he can no longer resist the urge to rummage by his feet. 

It’s the same thing as what Lando’s holding, only slightly bigger, unmistakably one of the old trophies. It’s what he wanted to get, coming here but somehow Carlos feels a little ambiguous about it, gained through such unsettling circumstances - he’d wanted reassurance, from the Force and instead got thrown into questioning himself.

Lando, if he is having any similar crisis, doesn’t quite seem to be reacting the same. “Why’s yours bigger?”

Carlos snorts, unclips his belts and hauls himself out of the Prototype on surprisingly wrung-out arms. He’d thought he was a pretty fit guy, given he doesn’t really have a lot of time to work on it but his elbows and shoulders ache like there was more effort than he’d realised going into piloting it or at least, that he’d been unnecessarily tensing.

Lando unexpectedly climbs across the Prototype to get out on the same side, tucking the trophy away somewhere underneath his cape and leaning up over Carlos’ shoulders, as he rolls them to get the tension out. “Are we going to tell them?”

He hadn’t thought about this. Technically, they are kind of stealing from Le Mans, which Jenson might have an opinion on. Carlos isn’t sure how to make the decision and can see a figure - figures, those _multiple lifeforms_ they’d detected what feels like a short lifetime ago - heading towards them while he tries to think fast. 

What he comes up with is, admittedly, not his most brilliant idea as he turns round, putting his back to Jenson-and-whoever and his arms around Lando’s waist, to clip the other trophy to his belt as well, hidden behind Lando’s back. It puts them very close together, for people who still don’t really know each other that well but Lando just leans forward, head against Carlos’ chest and hands high on his arms, rubbing at the stiff muscles there.

“We should tell them,” Lando mumbles it, almost against Carlos’ throat, neck craned up to brush his face against the underside of Carlos’ jaw and Carlos tries to nod without breaking Lando’s nose or anything stupid. 

“Had fun?” Jenson’s hand claps Carlos on the shoulder and he jumps involuntarily, taking his hands off Lando.

Lando tilts his head, squinting up at Jenson, “In a sense. Does everyone get weird stuff landing in the cockpit?”

“What stuff?”

Carlos finally turns round and is surprised to see Stoffel Vandoorne, although clearly not as much as Lando - who doesn’t know who he is and presumably forgot about the multiple lifeforms, shrinking back and drawing his cape tighter around himself, as though he’s rethinking the strategy of admitting what happened. 

Stoffel isn’t dangerous - at least, he hopes not - a diplomat-turned-starfighter who’d chosen adrenaline and an unnerving accuracy over the pacifism he’d been trained to promote. A little shorter than Carlos but not quite as small as Lando, his hair is close-cropped now, like he’s been doing it himself and he somehow looks harder, less naive maybe, than the last time Carlos had seen him across a briefing table.

“Sort of - Lando, show them, it’s ok.” He tries to smile reassuringly but attempts to do it in too many directions at once, panicking about whether Lando or Stoffel will get flighty first and he’s aware the resulting quick glance between them probably looks shiftier and more awkward than if he hadn’t tried. 

“Who are you?” Lando has the very slightly cocky, challenging look Carlos has seen once or twice before, on Groav when George had obviously recognised him and when he’d told Carlos he’d stolen a ship, back on Nur’burg. 

“This is Stoff, he’s one of us.” Carlos doesn’t miss Jenson’s phrasing or Stoffel’s slight eye-roll at not being allowed to speak for himself.

Lando doesn’t look entirely convinced but also as though he’s sufficiently outnumbered to not want to have this one out over some things neither of them can really even explain, let alone identify. He reaches behind him, unclips the trophies and holds them out, glinting in the sunlight as the sky turns ablaze with late afternoon and heat-haze shimmers in front of the tall, rustling grasses the other side of the pit lane.

Jenson turns one of the trophies, star shaped and dully metallic, over in his hands, “Fucking hell.”

“I didn’t believe… this is a very special place.” Carlos’ head feels jumbled, wired up like he’s just been in a star fight but with a sense of urgency, not the relief of still being alive, the Midfield still being intact, that he gets after that. “Come to Wo’king with us, we need everyone.”

He’s not really expecting a blunt request to work, just got gripped by some impulsive urge as though Jenson’s more likely to let them take the trophies without a fight, if he comes too. 

The older man looks up - or rather, down, at Carlos, although away from the trophy in his hands, “You surely do, if it gave you these. Only in the most desperate times.”

Stoffel shrugs like he’s used to putting up with this sort of semi-mythologised bullshit and says “Sure, why not,” without any question in the sentence.

Lando steps closer to Carlos, in front of him, as though he’s about to overrule on this and for a second Carlos feels the urge to grab him before he does anything stupid, fingertips millimeters from Lando’s sleeve when he says, firmly, “Ok but we’re flying.”

*****

As the Falcon’s displays blink on, Jenson hums, disapproving. Carlos rolls his eyes - “I know, she’s been butchered like a bog snarler but she runs like hell.”

“Not that, how long’s the hyperdrive warning light been on?” Jenson gestures to an ominously glowing, red panel that’s too near the hyperspace jump lever for Carlos to totally refute it. 

“I… don’t know.” Lando looks extremely bothered by it, now it’s been pointed out, slightly recoiling in his seat from the panels like they might explode in his face at any second. 

There’s silence for a moment as Jenson peruses the rest of the dashboard. “There’s a radiation leak, too - it’s the reactor coating, has to be. That’s quick enough to fix, we just need to get hold of some coaxium.”

“Oh, I thought there would be a problem but we just need to get to a mining world without the Frontrunners detecting us and get some of the most dangerous and valuable stuff in the galaxy,” says Stoffel, drily. “It’ll do a jump without breaking or poisoning us but we won’t get to Wo’king alive.”

“Fuck.” Carlos leans his head on the dashboard. “We can’t go to Corellia-”

“No, too far even if we weren’t all fugitives.” Jenson’s authority at being totally un-reassuring is oddly useful, making the decision for him before Carlos has to work it out himself.

“Kessel, then. It’s the only place we’ll get away with it but we’ll need credits.” Lando groans, Jenson grins and Stoffel lets out a little cackle of a laugh that surprises Carlos. He’d not really taken the softly-spoken Alderaanian to be familiar with, let alone enthusiastic about, a spice mine equal in villainy and toxicity.

Jenson’s heading back out the cockpit before anyone else has really noticed it and for a second Carlos assumes he’s leaving, bailing from what’s gone from a return to his old team to an obvious disaster but he smacks the overhead bulkhead with a large hand as he’s leaving. “Good job we’ve got all these completely legitimate Le Mans relics, then. Come on, Stoff.”

Stoffel looks much too excited, shooting out of his chair to follow Jenson and Carlos tries to pull himself together, at least to reassure Lando. “Hey, it’s not so bad - we have not died and you went crawling all through the ship looking for fancy capes, so it cannot be that serious.”

Lando scrunches his face up like Carlos has just delivered the opposite of reassurance; maybe he’s picking it up from Jenson. “Does anything you do _ever_ go smoothly?”

He exhales, heavily, before he can stop himself and find himself grinning ruefully up at Lando through his own fringe, still slightly flopped forwards from bashing his head on the console. “Not usually, no. Why, are you now the master of good life choices, rookie?”

It’s a little bit mean, maybe but Carlos doesn’t feel like he can be held fully responsible for a poorly-maintained hyperdrive on a ship they’ve had less than two standard days. He doesn’t expect Lando to bring one of his legs up, hugging his own knee.

“When we were in the Prototype - did you see something? At that first turn, when you let go of the wheel?”

Carlos pauses, not sure if he should tell this. He’s been dwelling on it - of course - and it’s not as though he didn’t _want_ some sort of Force encounter but he’d been imagining a glorious moment, getting imbued with all the endurance and speed of the old racers, not just a bit unnerved by his own past.

Unfortunately, his inability to withhold information from Lando is now well-documented. “Yes. To Corellia, at the docks - I think it was real but not, almost. I saw Daniil, my old teammate and we spoke.”

Lando nods, although there’s no way he knows who Dany is. “Me too - well, not your old teammate. I don’t know who he was, we were somewhere really cold, I could barely see him through the snow and it was like, less than a minute or something, I don’t know?”

Carlos takes his turn to nod, trying to get Lando to carry on. “He - I think he? I don’t even really know that. Asked me if I was just following you, now, not making my own decisions.”

‘Decisions’ seems like slightly too ambitious a word for Lando to actually get out, stuttering on the end so that he nearly swallows it and Carlos feels sympathetically mean at how blunt a metaphor that is for the man’s nerves. “Well, are you?”

Lando turns to look out the windshields, the green lights of the hangar opening reflecting off his eyes and giving him an odd, neon pallor. “I dunno.”

“I think it was a test, that’s why we get the trophies.” He murmurs it, not sure he even believes himself but he _was_ the one that dragged them there, after all. “I think it was the Force.”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t expecting agreement from Lando, previously pretty cynical about the whole thing. “I don’t know - it’s not like there’s another explanation, is there? And it’s supposed to be, like, the whole thing here, isn’t it?”

“Mmm,” Carlos can hear Jenson and Stoffel clattering back up the ramp, sounding pretty heavy-laden and then the metallic clanging of something - possibly several things - being offloaded into one of the under-floor storage hatches that speak to the ship’s past being even shadier than he’d initially suspected.

“Right, that’s enough chandon crystal to buy us a whole new drive, let alone some poxy coaxium.” Jenson sits down, strapping himself in as though he’s not just casually hinted at dumping a small fortune into the Falcon’s innards.

“Do I want to- no, you know what? I do not want to. Please do not tell me, I am done with knowing things.” Carlos shakes his head, starts on the calculations for Kessel, “Lando, get us out of orbit and let’s hope we don’t all die on the way.”

*****

Kessel is, even by the standards of the sort of planet Carlos seems to frequent, these days, a shithole. Actually, that might be too kind; the noxious plumes of toxic gas from the spice refineries and simmering pools of toxic, acidic waste runoff, tended to mostly by Imperial prisoners sentenced to a short, unpleasant life on the planet really made it more of a hellscape. 

He can see Lando cringing back from the windshield, as they fly in and also hear the sublight systems redirecting power to the life support, filtering hot fuck-knows-what out of the atmospherical intakes, fans whirring.

“I always forget how gross it is,” Stoffel says more conversationally than Carlos could have expected and he’s about to ask exactly what the fuck he’s had to do with Kessel before when the open radio channel crackles to life.

“Unknown vessel, what is your designation?” 

Lando, closer to the comms panel, looks across and Carlos has to shrug. Admitting who they are seems like a bad idea but he actually hadn’t really thought this far ahead, what with the worry they were all going to be irradiated before they got here.

Stoffel unbuckles himself, leans forward and presses the ‘open channel’ button, “This is MCL-32, we have an unscheduled stop after a fuel leak.”

Carlos is a little surprised to just get a “Copy, MCL-32” in response and he can’t stop the sense of dread creeping higher up his spine as they drift further down towards landside and he hopes it’s only going to get as averagely dangerous as anything does, on Kessel. 

It’s stuffy, the cockpit beginning to overheat as air filtering draws power away from the temperature control and he’s just about to consider whether to switch them from sublight to repulsor systems to try and save the engines (it’s not as though the atmosphere is likely to feel the benefit) when the radio crackles back to life.

“MCL-32, proceed to landing site 130R and await repair crew, do not attempt refuelling until ship has been assessed.”

Lando presses the button, this time, seemingly shaken out of it although they’re all leaning towards the panel, like children round a holo-display. “Copy that, thank you.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have thanked them,” Jenson pats Lando on the shoulder, “no one’s _grateful_ to have to land on Kessel.”

“Yeah, well.” Lando shudders slightly, visibly eyeing the still-red warning light next to the jump lever, “I am.”

“Wait until you see what it’s like down there,” murmurs Stoffel but there’s something excited about it and Carlos is, once again, about to ask him exactly what the fuck he’s got up to here when the coordinates come through for their landing bay and there’s some flying around thermal vents and jagged, encrusted cooling towers to be getting on with. 

They’re directed to land on a precariously small pontoon, which shifts disturbingly under the Falcon’s weight as Carlos flicks the ground suspension system on and tries to work out if they have strut brakes to stop and slippage. It’s misty, outside - the air grey and hazed with smoke and fumes and even through the filter system, he can smell something like burning metal, sharp and nasty in his nose and the back of his throat.

“Whoa.” Says Lando, peering out at what’s ahead of them, “I thought Nur’burg was fucking redneck.”

“ _Don’t_ say that,” Carlos swats at him, “it’s a lot more organised and likely to kill you than that.”

“I only showed you the tourist bits.” Lando tears his eyes away from the scene outside, repair crew bustling around the ship and making the pontoon rock again in a way that Carlos would love to pretend doesn’t send his stomach lurching. “Are there some masks on here or whatever?”

“Should be, I don’t think this is her first time on Kessel.” Jenson pats Lando’s shoulder again, stretches and stands up, ducking slightly to avoid the ceiling switches. “Come on, let’s find out what the damage is.”

Carlos feels fussy, trying to find at least one of the jumpers he’d shed on Le Mans and then _almost_ maternal, pinning Lando against the wall and physically unclipping his cape while growling out that if he wants to keep it, he doesn’t want to wear it here. Lando seems a little affronted by the aggression, Carlos not really sure where it had come from, himself, except that it’s been a long time since he’s been on Kessel and he likes it even less than when he was here under a Frontrunner license.

Lando pulls one of the longest, roughest-looking grey over-layers on, hanging low over his thighs and swamping his neck in a hooded cowl, eyes flashing when he glares at Carlos, “What the fuck’s up with you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like it - something is bound to go wrong, here.” Carlos knows he’s got the grumpy, rough tone he uses when he’s trying to seem tougher than he is and at least Lando looks more amused than intimidated but he’s kind of embarrassed by himself.

“Where _don’t_ things go wrong. It’ll be fine, at least we can fix the ship.” Lando steps closer to him, fingers on Carlos’ arm, “Can’t be worse than getting blown up in hyperspace.”

Stoffel, pulling the top of his flight suit up where he’d tied it round his waist for the journey, is eyeing them slightly shrewdly. “How did you two meet, anyway?”

“I’m his tour guide,” Lando says, tongue sliding to the corner of his mouth in a way Carlos recognises as his teasing expression and he decides not to give anything else away. 

Jenson’s back before they can get too much further into the specifics, in any case, handing out what look like slightly battered but definitely Kessel-grade air filtration masks. Carlos shakes his out a bit before putting it on, the others taking an equally cautious approach to any dead fliis or grot that might be lurking, except Jenson, who hooks his straight on. 

Noticing Carlos’ raised eyebrows, he just laughs, muffled through the filter - “whatever’s in here is going to be a hell of a lot better than anything out there.”

The ramp opens with a hydraulic clang and if the metallic taste had been getting stronger inside the ship, it’s like being hit in the mouth with it as soon as they’re outside. Carlos’ nostrils are burning, even through the mask and he wishes he’d put gloves on, noticing Lando pulling the wool of his sleeves over his hands as the acid in the air hits their skin. 

It’s hard to see for a moment, plexiglass misting over but when a cloud of hot fumes clears, there’s a humanoid figure walking towards them, long, dark hair drifting in the thermals coming up from whatever godawful fluid they’re all floating on. Carlos decides heading behind Jenson, down the walkway off the pontoon, is probably the best course of action for now and scuttles over, trying not to slip over or think about what might be making it wet underfoot. 

“Leena!” Whoever it is, Jenson clearly knows them, embracing the figure vigorously, “It’s been years - don’t tell me you’ve joined the syndicate.”

Now he’s close enough, Carlos can definitely tell it’s a woman, even through a heavy-duty mask and anti-radiation overalls, a heavy tool belt slung round her waist. 

“No, I work for myself. But someone has to fix their ships - like yours, I see.” She’s visibly assessing the rest of them. “Who’re this lot?”

“Best not to ask, really.” Jenson winces, in what Carlos guesses is a convincing pantomime of having been acquiring waifs and strays in the way he remembers him doing back in his Midfield days, rather than being one of them himself. “How many chandon crystals to re-coat the reactor chambers?”

“ _Chandon_ crystals?” Leena’s eyes widen, even behind the mask, “You do know how to treat a girl. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

Less than ten minutes later, they’re sitting the other side of some smeared and blackened blaster-proof glass, propped unsteadily on drunken-legged bar stools in the sort of place no one without a criminal record should be, watching the repair team go to work on the Falcon. 

“Two standard hours and we’ll be on our way,” Jenson puts down four ominously-steaming mugs, “Go on, it won’t kill you as fast as most things around here.”

Lando demurs, pulling a face and Carlos wishes he’d done the same shortly after putting some in his mouth and wondering if it’s not meant to be used as fuel. Which is probably how he ends up teaching Lando to play sabacc and only realising halfway through their third game that he definitely already knew and was just looking to con Carlos into having to service the latrines.

It’s all going suspiciously smoothly, in fact, for a trip to Kessel, before Leena taps on the glass in front of them, shrugs ruefully and gestures at a group of Syndicate mercenaries setting up a laser cannon on the pontoon opposite their ship.

*****

“What did Fernando say he’d been doing with this, exactly?” Stoffel sounds oddly calm, for a man strapping himself into a ship currently under bombardment.

“We didn’t stop to ask because people were shooting at us.” Lando says, darkly, pulling the yoke towards him, “Carlos, stop fucking around, the landing bay lights are about to go out.”

“Yes, yes.” He clicks in the final strap, fairly confident this is going to be one of the flights where you really need them, “Do you want to die in a black hole because I do the calculations wrong on our shiny, new hyperdrive, or?”

“Whatever,” Lando clearly decides to take things into his own hands, flooring them out of the hangar doors with only a slight bump from the lack of joint control before they’re blasting through a cloud of noxious steam and up.

It’s much easier to make calculations, it turns out, without the sound of blaster fire ricocheting off duralloy plates. He also has the chance to think through the ethics of telling his shipmates what the plan is or not letting them worry about it.

Carlos is pretty sure he knows what he’s doing, the Kessel Run a familiar escapade from his Tauro mining days when the priority was less his safety than sheer speed, doing the dirty work the true Frontrunners didn’t like to be caught at. But this is also technically a route he hasn’t tried before, only head about from toothy old traders who’d said the Purrgills used it, back in the Cosworth days.

Which when you’re heading through a field of planet-crushing black holes, is perhaps not enough to go on. Nonetheless, speed is of the essence and the hyperdrive’s unlikely to ever be in a better state than it is now.

The Falcon rolls, under Lando’s control as he swings them round a signal tower that had been totally disguised by plumes of gas until milliseconds before they would have hit it and Carlos decides that he might as well continue his tradition of making hyperspace jumps first, telling people later, punching in the numbers.

“Kid, you’re good.” Jenson is leaning forward, looking over Lando’s shoulder to what he’s doing and Carlos pauses in tapping the keypad to slide his eyes across, watch Lando blush even as he’s pulling off an impossible twist between thermal acid chutes. “Get us up, we need to be ready to jump before they lock the shields.”

Ugh, Carlos had forgotten about that particular problem. “No, we jump inside - keep us low, if we go up they’ll turn them on as we go through, shear the ship in half.” He’s seen it done before, debris falling like fireworks to the amusement of a prisoner population too brutalised not to want to see others face a worse fate.

“Inside the shields? Are you _actually_ insane?” Stoffel sounds panicked for the first time Carlos can ever remember and Lando just grunts an agreement, not exactly disputing the plan but emphasising that he definitely does think Carlos is out of his mind.

“You had better hope so.” Carlos finishes entering the jump coordinates, almost grabs the yoke on his side but decides to leave Lando to it, wheeling them sideways between mining towers, “We need a clear space, not much - she’ll go through a tower, no problem at that speed but no mountains.”

“Cool, I don’t think there are any.” Lando’s knowledge of Kessel’s geography is clearly not as good as anyone else’s, earning a cabin-wide round of snorts. “Oh alright, smartasses, where should I be going?”

“Head north-west, there’s the runoff evaporation flats - it’s rough, thermally but that shouldn’t matter at lightspeed and there’s nothing to run into.” Stoffel knows _way_ too much about Kessel.

“When were you here? I thought you were a good, Alderaanian boy?” Carlos twists round to examine him. Come to that, why _did_ Stoffel disappear a few years ago?

He grimaces, “Was, before I met Fernando.”

Ah yes, that would probably do it. And explains why he’s been lying low with Jenson ever since - although now Carlos thinks about it, he does also seem quite familiar with this, specific ship and everything that’s happened to him recently seems to be raising a lot more questions than it necessarily answers.

“At least they fixed the hyperdrive before they started shooting,” Jenson notes, cheerily, waving at the now green light by the jump lever and Carlos realises he probably should have checked that before even considering going to lightspeed. 

“Well, the light’s changed. Let’s hope that means it’s fixed.” Lando looks strained, steering through clouds of rough, buffeting gases, “Fuck, this is nuts - are you ready to do it?”

Honestly, Carlos isn’t really sure he is. It’s a bit experimental to jump to lightspeed at sub-orbital, although he’s heard of it being done and to then throw them into the path of several black holes is somewhere further up the chain of recklessness, into insanity. But when it’s that or the jaws of certain death, you have to trust your own inventiveness sometimes. 

He waits until he can see the flats ahead, the ship stabilising for a few seconds between harsh updrafts and then pushes up the lever for the _roughest_ acceleration to lightspeed he’s ever experienced.

It feels like they’re being shaken, like a giant hand has got hold of the Falcon and is treating it like a baby’s rattle and it takes a massive presence of mind and every steady-handed trigger-finger skill he has to hit the nav computer’s distance tracker reset because if they’re doing this, he wants to know they did. 

He’s not quite sure when they go from the initial turbulence of suborbital jump to passing narrowly between the Maw and the Pit, except that suddenly it feels less like they’re being shaken and more like something’s tearing them apart, the Falcon threading a needle-precision path between being caught by either, ricocheting off the push-pull repulsion of two crushing gravity pits.

There’s a moment of respite, where the ship stabilises and the lights through the cockpit window _almost_ become straight lines, not jagged blobs before they’re morphing and jumping again, ship swinging wildly as it crosses the corkscrew and on into the Akkadese Maelstrom. It’s just when he feels like his brain is going to explode, heart thumping violently and stomach not so much lurching as threatening to disembowel him, barely able to breathe, when as fast as they’d gone into it, it stops. 

Carlos stares out the cockpit window like a kid. Fuck, they made it. He pats the Falcon gently, trying to get some oxygen back into his system and lose the spots in front of his vision. “ _Good_ girl.”

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Lando’s hair is standing on end and he looks incredibly pale, as though he might throw up. Slowly, lights stop flashing and whatever had been blaring a warning signal tails off to just the steady, deep rumble of hyperspace travel and the life support’s soft breeze.

Carlos shakes his fringe out of his eyes, checks the dashboard and can’t stop himself whooping, “That, my little Nur’burg friend, was the Kessel Run in 11.98 parsecs.”

He probably deserves the wrench Lando throws _just_ past his head.

*****

There’s not tonnes to do in hyperspace, autopilot system fully in control. Once the adrenaline of making the run wears off a bit they’re just trying to stay out of the way of Jenson’s obvious nostalgia tour, an old ship apparently proving too much temptation to open every locker and poke at things Carlos hopes aren’t booby-trapped in a way that would endanger the rest of tbhem.

They’re both down to the base layers of their thick Groav woollens and Carlos is surprised how similarly-proportioned they are, Lando’s shape having been pretty mysterious under the cape and then thick layers of grey. 

Sitting in a corridor, their backs against the bulkhead wall, Lando leans his head on Carlos’ shoulder and he instinctively leans in too. The side of Lando’s torso is pressed against his, their hips close and knees tilted against each other and for the first time in ages, Carlos feels something sort of like _relaxed._

“Can I get an X-Wing?” Lando mumbles it incredibly quietly, almost into Carlos’ arm.

He chuckles but not unkindly, “You can have whatever you want, after we tell them about the Kessel Run.”

Lando laughs, _definitely_ muffling his mouth against Carlos’ shoulder this time. He doesn’t quite notice how they go from not adding anything else to the conversation to a comfortable silence to just resting against each other until he wakes up, warmly comfortable, with one of Lando’s arms around his waist and has to guiltily dab a bit of his own drool out of the other man’s hair with his sleeve.

*****

Wo’king is as chaotic as usual, actually possibly slightly more than usual and Carlos has never tried to land anything as big as the Falcon in a hangar intended for nothing larger than an A-Wing. Fortunately, Lando at least seems to have worked out how to get it down without breaking anything. 

The hangar is full of people and ships that they’re frantically working on, more than Carlos has ever seen here before. Cargo and fuel and munitions are everywhere, the Millennium Falcon clearly already an annoyance as one mechanic shouts at a droid to pull the long, yellow snake of a fuel line around it and the ship shakes very slightly as a battery-laden transporter nudges one of the struts. 

He’d known it was _likely_ to be busy, just not quite how much and it’s the sort of thing that makes Carlos slightly nervous - they’re obviously preparing for something big. Which is good, because he’d been worried he might have to throw a bit of _‘I’m a dashing, rogue intelligence agent and I know exactly how far the frontrunners will go, we need to take action’_ around, which is always embarrassing.

But this looks like a major mobilisation, like something’s already underway and he feels suddenly kind of out of the loop. Maybe Le Mans was a massive error - but finding Jenson surely validates it, whether anyone believes any of the rest of it or not. 

He doesn’t know what they did with the Operation: Party Mode data, no one’s tried to get in contact with him in the days since he sent it and he probably would have noticed, if he’d been on his own but Carlos had got kind of caught up wanting to impress Lando a bit. And the Kessel Run had seemed cool as hell - _is_ cool as hell, Carlos can’t wait to tell George they actually _did it_ but he shouldn’t have let himself get distracted, they’ve got an evil empire to defeat. 

“So this is what the place is like now?” Jenson sounds wryly amused, turns to Stoffel to explain, “It’s exactly the same but the paint’s falling off.”

That feels like some kind of awful metaphor for Carlos’ life in the past few weeks - he’s half-tempted to check he hasn’t got any grey hairs - so he decides not to acknowledge it. “Come on, we’re late for the briefing already.”

*****

If Carlos was to guess what it was about his life that was truly cursed, it would probably be the capes. Just weeks ago, he had no idea how much they could plague his life and now he is aware of not one but _two_ people wearing them in his vicinity. 

As soon as they walk into the briefing room, he’s both excited and nervous to see Lewis is back. Wearing dark, softly draped cloth and a long, silver-blue cape, more elegant than even the one Lando incongruously dug out of their junked-up ship, this means they have a chance. And also that it’s serious enough that they need him, which means the chance is very small.

It temporarily paralyses Carlos in the doorway, Lando bumping into him from behind as Jenson shoves past and into the room, clearly seeing Lewis over Carlos’ head. 

“Jenson!” Lewis’ cackling laugh is as surprising as it always was, a little too wicked for someone of such standing in the Midfield. “It’s good to see you, dude, who dug you up?”

“These fuckers,” Jenson gestures back towards where Stoffel has joined them in door-hanging, “turned up trophy-hunting on Le Mans and then convinced me to chase black holes with them.”

“Christ.” Lewis is grinning, as he shakes his head, hair long and braided now where it falls into his face, rather than the short crop he’d had when Carlos last saw him. 

“Who’s that?” Lando has grabbed Carlos’ shoulder to stand on tiptoe, peering over. “Oh my god, that cape is so cool.”

“Not sure you could carry it off-” says Carlos, prioritising the important things in what Lando said, at the same time as Stoffel actually answers the question.

“Hamilton, he’s supposed to be a master pilot or something. Or dead - sometimes both, he’s not been around the Midfield for years.” Carlos privately suppresses the need to point out that neither has Stoffel, on considerably less reputation because he’s honestly trying to be less of a bitch.

Lando hums, like he understands that and also a little bit like he’s in awe, as Lewis sweeps round, cape swishing while he guides Jenson out of the briefing room, the two deep in conversation about things Carlos wishes he could listen into and also probably would rather weren’t happening.

“He was - he. I saw him, on Le Mans.” That’s enough to make Carlos turn round, jostling Lando off his shoulder and seeing him bump back down to his normal height, eyes wide. 

“What?” Stoffel sounds rightly confused, for someone who would definitely have known who was there.

“Not on Le Mans - I don’t know, how do you explain it? The thing that happened, in the prototype, I went somewhere snowy and he was there.” Lando swallows, visibly. “He told me to - nevermind, I don’t know, maybe it was a dream.”

“Told you what, Lando?” Carlos is trying to be quiet, keep his voice low, soothing because Lando’s is getting higher and louder and more panicked and it’s definitely best if they keep ‘strange hallucinations of Midfield legends’ to themselves.

Lando shrugs, looking slightly tearful and away from Carlos, at his shoes. “To be myself? It sounds stupid, now.”

Carlos meets Stoffel’s eyes, over Lando’s shoulder and the other man shrugs, “I think that’s kind of his thing, to be fair.”

Before they can get any further into Lando’s Hamilton-induced self-esteem crisis or whatever it is, someone bangs a table and Carlos remembers they’re meant to be being briefed on a very important, mission critical space battle not gossiping in a corridor, shuffling into the back of the room. 

Admiral Zakbar doesn’t look any different from the last time Carlos saw him, leaning over the holo-table as he brings up a 3D map. “Folks, I won’t lie - things don’t look good for us, right now. But we’ve got a tiny bit of headway and we’re gonna have to use it, like it or not.”

There’s general grumbling from the room, some excited and some a lot more cynical - it’s been a long few years, for the Midfield and the concept of hope seems almost dangerous. “We’ve had the strategists take a call and there’s a chance, if we’re smart. I’ll let Ruth and Hannah explain the rest, it’s a little smarter than me.”

A dark-haired woman shoves Zak aside, taking control of the hologram and pointing across the map, “They’re faster than us, they’re better at adapting than us and they have more resources and numbers. But we can beat them, if we’re clever.”

“Which we are,” Carlos knows Ruth, ice-blonde hair perfectly styled above perfectly tailored, red Naboo silk robes. “And I know each and every one of you has the ability to do this, if we give you the opportunity.”

“We think we can beat them, a little flaw built into their systems - there’s an oil flow meter that’s vulnerable, if we can hit it with enough precision. It’ll be hard - you’ll be flying down channels across the Frontrunner station and it’s their home turf, expect Tifosi resistance and Mu Gello is well-armed, even at a surface level.” Hannah points to the screen again, zooming in on what looks like a set of tanks, deep in one of the crevasses of the station’s surface.

“The advantage - and the theat - is that they’ve come to us.” Hannah zooms out the diagram, to show quite how alarmingly close Mu Gello is to Wo’king, hanging almost within orbital space, then back in on the tanks. “This is what you want to hit - we can tell you how to get there.”

“In theory,” Ruth adds wryly, “The practice, I’m afraid, will be entirely down to you and whatever supernatural assistance you believe in.”

Lando reaches back behind him from where he’s stood in front of Carlos, touches their fingers together. Whatever, indeed.

*****

Someone else has clearly been flying Carlos’ X-Wing, the seat is all wrongly-positioned when he tries to get in and has to promptly, undignifiedly, get back out before he crushes his own knees on the controls. 

He huffs, getting comfortable again and digging the straps out, readjusting them to his own dimensions, before irritatedly punching the radio button, “This is Papaya Two, who has been flying my ship?”

There’s a total absence of answer and he decides, from the seat position, it has to be De Vries and if he gets back from this alive Carlos is going to give the little shit a piece of his mind. 

The moments before heading off to do horrible battle in the emptiness of space are weirdly dull. Systems check, systems check again, radio check just to make sure they really weren’t replying and he’s not going to be cut off from comms with a Tifosi fighter up his ass. Wait for clearance, second radio check, final systems check.

Absently, he wonders how Lando’s getting on with it - this is all the mundaneity of the job, to Carlos but he doesn’t think Lando’s ever even solo-flown in space before, let alone in a battle and he feels a cold pit of worry setting up in his guts. Yes, speeder racing is brutal and if the man’s still alive after that and then the past week or so of their adventures, he’s not an idiot - or maybe just is the right _type_ of idiot, at least - but Carlos would hate to lose him to a stray, scarlet bastard.

The radio blips on in his right ear, squadron call, “I think I’m Papaya One?”

Carlos nearly laughs at how uncertain he sounds, “You are, do not worry about it - it’s just a number, you can follow me.”

“Right. I show you the lovely Green Hell and you take me to a killer space station.” Lando sounds excited, with a bit of an edge of something there. “I can’t believe I get to fly an X-Wing, this is so fucking cool.”

“Mmm, wait until people are shooting at us, it’s not so fun.” Lando explosively laughs and Carlos tries to find the volume dial, he could do without being deafened in the middle of a space battle.

Lando gets control of himself, “Dude, people have done _nothing but_ shoot at us since I met you. You’re like a blaster magnet.”

Carlos grunts. That may be true but he’d rather not think about it _just_ now, “Less talking, more flying, hotshot.” Something about Lando’s realism is reassuring, at least - he feels less guilty that he’s taking some starry eyed kid to possible-if-not-likely doom, even if that’ s actually what’s happening. Sue him, if they don’t do this things will be even worse. 

It’s quiet, going up in an X-Wing. The cabin gets hot, atmospheric engines designed for speed rather than the pilot’s comfort and being so jammed in is good when you’re barrel-rolling between enemies or asteroids but feels uncomfortable without g forces, a little claustrophobic while the craft’s not at full speed. 

It’s maybe boredom that makes him open the comms link - or some sort of skin-itchiness, adrenaline beginning to crawl through him without anything to spend it on yet. “How do you like your first X-Wing flight?”

There’s a worrying silence for a second, before Lando replies, breathless, “This is. So. Fucking. Cool. I could have _destroyed_ the field in this - fuck, how are these even real?”

Carlos nearly laughs except that he remembers his own first time, not so many years ago and thinking almost the same. Even compared to the Frontrunner ships, the X-Wings have so much power and stability, the fine skill of maneuvering them difficult to master but even the basic aerodynamics like nothing else he’s ever flown. It’s a little contagious, remembering that he’s good at this after a few months chasing other things, like coming home - a concept he’d kind of given up on the idea of having.

Or maybe it’s Lando. He’s aware he’s grown much too fond of the younger man, shared experiences binding them together quicker than they truly know each other, forced to trust each other 

“When we have done this,” he almost stops himself - where did _that_ certainty come from, “we will carry on, yes?”

“Why are you talking about this now?” Lando audibly groans, like this isn’t the sort of topic he can process at the same time as preparing to possibly die. “Yeah, sure, if we’re both still alive.”

“We will be.” Carlos feels very certain, somehow. “We have done several stupider things this week, alone.”

“Shut the fuck up and fly then.” It’s fond and Carlos’ heart swells a little - a genuine friend was the last thing he’d expected to unearth at the Ring of Nur’burg but maybe the Force put them together, in that doorway. He’s started believing a lot of things, lately. 

Leaving the Wo’king atmosphere, Mu Gello looms large and bone-grey and threatening, unreal in its proportions. He eases on the sublight system, thrusters igniting in a roar behind him and more systems coming online with the increased power, flicks on the front deflectors for now - the rears will no doubt come in handy by the time they’re being chased. 

Everything comes closer much quicker, in space - without an atmosphere to travel through, distance is so much bigger and crossed in unreal times, the first Tifosi craft hailing fire down on their squadrons before he almost feels ready for it. But this is _not_ Carlos’ first space battle, brain going quiet with concentration as his own, orange bolts shear through bright red fighters. 

It’s easy to lose himself in it, the speed of weaving - not looking at the craft pelting the space station’s surface around him and whether they’re friend or foe, in exploding. “Papaya squadron, going in.” 

He gets just a blip of acknowledgement from Lando, which means he’s concentrating - good - and also that none of the ships smashed already were his, which is doubly so. 

It’s just as they enter the comms shaft they need to navigate, Tifosi on their tail, that some pulse comes from a dish nearby and Carlos nearly crashes.

“What-” Everything has shut down on the controls of his X-Wing. “Fuck, fuck - my ship is dead.” But he’s still flying, this isn’t possible, he should be smashing uncontrollably into the side of the space station below.

“It’s the dash, not the ship-” Lando sounds breathless down the comms, excited or panicked or probably both, like he’s gritting his jaw. “Mine too, keep going.”

“But-” Carlos weaves round a signal dish or something, “how?”

“Same as in the Prototype, dickhead - I thought you were the one who believed in all this shit?” The radio crackles out of signal as Lando disappears behind a tower and Carlos fervently hopes that wasn’t him crashing. 

He looks ahead, tries to work out how to do this with no idea what speed he’s even going, other than _too fast to do this without the computer._ Flying, he’s ok with but trying to dodge fire from ships behind him without knowing where they are is suicidal, green laser bolts peppering the air around him and it’s not like he even knows if the shields are still up. 

“How are you-” it’s not that he really wants to _bother_ Lando, they’re in the same circumstances, after all but Carlos feels like he’s somehow coping with this worse, maybe just more used to relying on the systems while Lando wouldn’t have known what half of them did anyway, yet. 

“Shut the fuck up and concentrate before you get killed,” Lando sounds more than slightly panicked and Carlos sees another X-Wing buzz overhead, realises it’s him after taking out whoever was immediately behind Carlos. “Go on, you’re a better shot than me.”

They’re close, he knows, recognising the shapes around them and it can only be a few thousand metres before they’re near enough to hit the tanks, dodging signal towers and steel mesh comms radar arrays like a forest.

“Argh,” He’s been hit from behind again, the right lower strut grinding sparks and collecting debris off the station as he tries to stop it turning into an impact. “Fuck, how do we get them off us?”

“You don’t,” it’s a new voice on the radio and Carlos nearly jumps out of his skin, thinking for a second it’s the Tifosi speaking to them about their impending doom. “We’ll hold them up for you.”

Carlos doesn’t have a way of looking behind but he recognises the voice, now, especially with the hollered “ _go fuck ‘em up, mate_ ” in the distance, before the line goes quiet, that’s unmistakably George.

“Thank you, Claire-” he finally gets his own ship righted, slowing enough to even be able to think about aiming. 

“May the Force be with you, Carlos. Go fuck them up.” It sounds wrong, coming from Claire but he can’t help laughing, the odds suddenly so far back in their favour. 

He stops thinking about what’s behind, stops worrying about where he is or Tifosi or the fact this is a one-shot deal, tightens his fingers on the steering paddles and tries to feel what he did on Le Mans, like the surface beneath is telling him where to go. 

It’s harder to find, skimming the surface of a hostile space station, than in somewhere so deep into the mythology but a deep breath has him close his eyes, trust something other than what he’s seeing and take aim at something he just _knows_ the location of. His fingers tighten on the triggers, aim in milliseconds and release in time to spiral upwards, away from the explosion.

He shouts, thinking that’s it, before a bigger explosion follows behind and another, orange X-Wing draws alongside him.

Carlos can barely make out the “You’re a _shit_ tour guide, I’m never following you again,” in between Lando’s relieved giggling and the screaming of the rest of the team down the radio.

*****

An exploding space station isn’t really the background for a party - and they really _should_ get out of here before someone recognises the Falcon again. He’d love to think it’s not got history with the Midfield but anything Fernando’s touched certainly carries the risk.

Lando flops down heavily, next to Carlos, on the scrubby grass of Wo’king. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know - perhaps we could go on more _cultural_ excursions.” Carlos pokes him in the ribs, feeling slightly giddy after several drinks he’s fairly sure aren’t intended for human consumption. 

“Hmm, I think I’d rather you told me we were going to plunge through a black hole or whatever, this time.” Lando pokes him back and Carlos falls back into the grass, giggling. Yes, ok, he’s a terrible man - maybe his scum and villainy stock is higher than he’d thought.

“The Frontrunners will be back, this is only a temporary advantage.” He’s trying to be serious but looking up at Lando, eyes sparkling and clearly keen to continue doing stupid things in space together, he can’t help grinning. “Come on, what is it you started believing? We’ll just know.”

Lando lies down next to him, explosions in the sky above making lights move over his face. “Yeah. We will.”

"Not just following me, then?" Carlos is only half-teasing, kind of keen to check this.

Lando shakes his head, eyes closing as he nudges Carlos' shoulder, "We make our own choices." Carlos reaches down, entangles their fingers. They do - even if they're mostly bad ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *coughs* well anyway, err, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://formulatrash.tumblr.com) if you want to talk about how cool a mfing mandalorian-style series about the history and legacy of podracing would be or just send me the usual anon abuse or whatever.
> 
> I am a typical online attention whore for comments and kudos so y'know, much appreciated if you leave 'em, sorry I've been bad at replying - I hadn't logged in for ages.

**Author's Note:**

> dear god what the hell am i doing with my life


End file.
